


The Time Lord's Wife

by Frin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-19 22:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 44,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2404610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frin/pseuds/Frin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Okay, I admit being just a little bit inspired by Practical Magic!</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. The Man Out Of Time

_First Date. One_

_Saturday October 25, 1991 (Rose is 4)_

_Rose._ Some nights I would wake and hear my mummy crying. I would scrabble out of my little bed and pad up the landing softly.

Mummy would usually see the crack of light as I opened her door wide and shift over, lifting the blankets to let me in. Her tears would stop and she would fuss with me until we both drifted off again.

But this night it was different. I heard a noise and got up to what I thought was my usual routine, but as I got onto the landing I realized that something was different. Something wasn't quite right. 

This night, I found a man in my kitchen. I wasn't frightened. I strolled in, half thinking that Mum had a friend over. The fridge was wide open and he was taking things from bags and putting them in.

I watched for a moment as this stranger placed meat and vegetables, fruit, yoghurt, eggs and cheese in our empty little fridge. That morning when I had looked, there had only been half a tub of cheap marg and a pint of milk.

"Wotcha doin', Mista?" I asked, blinking in the bright kitchen lights and he spun around clearly surprised by my discovery. I clutched my Teddy tighter, summoning up the courage to challenge him. I must have looked comical in my little nylon nightie with my wet thumb still hovering at my mouth.

He was tall and thin, with a kind face and deep dark brown eyes. His hair stuck above his head in unruly spikes and he had what I, as a small child, thought was half a beard growing down the sides of his face. His face, although still surprised, softened.

"Oh, it's you! Hello... I was just... well... you can see what I was..."

"Feedin' the poor, Mista?"

"No, just helping some dear friends."

"I don't knows you, Mista! Is you one of them angels?"

"No, no. I'm not.. I'm... I'm a Time Traveller. I'm a friend of yours in the future." 

I looked deep into his dark eyes and knew that he was telling the truth although I didn't really understand. I nodded, believing without question. "You brung food 'ere a coupla months ago, dinya?"

"Yes, yes, actually, I did. I didn't want to see my favourite girls going hungry."

"You Farver Chrismas, then?" He smiled and shook his head. "Wot's yer name, then?"

"Name? My name... is... John." 

This time I could tell he wasn't being altogether truthful, but I didn't probe any further. He sat down, there on the kitchen floor cross-legged and patted the place beside him. I sat beside him and held him with my own dark brown eyes.

"If I tell you my name, it could hurt the future and we really mustn't do that, so, if you call me John for now, then one day, you will know my name." I thought about this and nodded on a yawn.

"Tired? Did I disturb you?"

"I thought you was my mummy. She cries sometimes."

"Cries?"

"For my daddy. He died and it makes her sad. She doesn't think I know, but I do. I cuddle her to stop her being lonely."

His eyes sparkled and he nodded. "You would and it would. Your mummy is a brave lady." I didn't answer, but could feel the next yawn gripping me. "Anyway... you should get back to bed, Rose. I have to leave."

"Will you be back?"

"Yes...oh, yes, I think that's a given!" The look I returned must have been a little vacant and he shook his head. 

"You're a friend in the future... of course we'll meet again!" He stood up and helped me to my feet, almost hoisting me into the air. 

"Bed!" he ordered and I padded towards the door, only glimpsing back for one last look. Then I smiled and ran to my room where I knelt on my bed and looked out of the window.

I saw nothing but a few flashing lights, but the low grinding, wailing noise I heard was one that was already familiar to me. It was a noise that I would grow very accustomed to throughout my whole life.


	2. A Man Out Of Time: 2.

_A Man Out Of Time: Two._

_Tuesday June 7th 1993 (Rose is 6)_

It was tough growing up on the Powell Estate. There were some bad types living around there. Mum taught me to look after myself. Taught me to fight my own fights. But there were times when I was little, when it wasn’t the big kids who were the problem.

And this day was harsh on a tough little girl. Showing emotion wasn’t right. They called you soft.

“I never, Shareen, I never!” I screamed at my friend, who observed me with cold, dark eyes.

“Terry says he seen you… and if you was, then you should show me!”

“Terry’s a bleedin’ fool!” I had been taught not to swear, but Shareen needed to know how serious I was.

“Yeah?” The little boy stepped forward, wiping his nose on his sleeve and sniffing. He stood right in front of me, “Says who?”

“Says me!” I faced him, I was a little taller, not much, but he was stocky and he knew how to throw his weight about.

“I ain’t Mickey Smiff, ya know? I don’t care iffen I hit girls nor boys?”

“Try me, fatty!” I stuck out my chin and awaited his launch. He struck instantly and I was surprised at the force at which he pushed me. But I didn’t go down. No, I launched myself right back, kicking and screaming and scratching.

I remember seeing Shareen sprinting away and Terry’s cry as I drew blood, but everything else was a bit of a blur. The strong whirring sound drowned out most of our screams and a pair of large, firm hands pulled us both apart by our collars.

We dangled momentarily, looking wide-eyed at one another and then our feet touched back down. We stared up at the tall man, who had pried us apart, our mouths hanging open.

“Fighting never solved anything,” he muttered and I realized it was him. The man who had filled my fridge on a fairly regular basis for the past few years.

“Let me go! Let me go, or I’ll have old bill arrest ya!” squeaked Terry, trying to get out of John’s grip.

“I will let you go when I have finished, I will finish when I know why the pair of you were fighting like this!”

“He said I was stealin’ from the shop! Said I had stolen sweets and this watch and I never!” I burst out. John turned to Terry looking down at him.

“Where do you get your information?”

“I heard it, didn’t I?” Terry continued his fruitless struggle.

“Well, Rose is no thief and accusing someone of any crime without proper evidence is a crime in itself, do you understand that?” Terry didn’t answer, but he was silent and then John let go of us. Terry looked at me and blinked.

“I really never!” I said vehemently.

“Yeah, well musta heard wrong then, sorry an’ all that!” He mumbled back and then with one more look at John he took off towards his block. I watched him go, knowing he would probably get a whack for his bloody nose when he got in and actually feeling a little sorry for him.

“You turned up in the nick o’ time!” I grinned up at him and he smiled down at me, giving me that feeling of being known even though I knew I didn’t, not that well.

“You really don’t need to fight, you know. You have the power of words and they are so much stronger than the hand.”

“You speakin’ in riddles again… wot are you, Shakespeare?” He laughed at my comment, took my hand and began to walk with me back across the estate towards home.

“I just meant that you're bright enough to talk yourself out of a situation.” I grinned a toothless grin at him and played with the gap on my gums with my tongue.

“You callin’ me clever?”

“Yep, you’re brilliant!” he answered back.

“I been waiting for ya, never seen ya, though I knew ya been!”!

“Ah well, I can only come at certain moments, you know. Not all time is fixed, but most is.”

“Fixed? What, like it was broke once?”

“No… well... maybe. Some time bends about and you can move it and shape it in different ways if you have the moment. Most is just fixed and will happen no matter what.” I nodded, trying to grasp what he was saying.

“Bit like play dough.” I said after awhile.

“Sorry?”

“Mum makes me salt dough to play with, its fun squeezing it about and making stuff from it. Sometimes I forget and leave it out and it goes hard. Ain’t no good then, have to chuck it!” He stopped after I had finished, a slow smile spreading across his face that spread to me. I would learn, in time, that his smile was always infectious.

“See, you're brilliant, truly awesome!” he said and pulled at my arm as we continued to walk.

“Will I see you again soon?” I asked, holding my breath, worrying what the answer might be. He stopped again and turned to face me with a small smile.

“Is it confusing, me coming into your life like this? All higgedledy-piggedledy?” He crouched down so that our faces were on a level and I studied his. I felt so drawn to him that I wondered if he were my daddy, or an angel to guide me.

“Nah, it’s just… I waited, and you never come… would be nice to know…”

“Tell you what, I’ll see if I can sort something out, a way to let you know sort of when I might turn up… it might not be completely accurate, but it might give you a rough idea… how does that sound?” I nodded and smiled, only half understanding what he was saying but enjoying the sound of his voice all the same.

He pulled out a handkerchief from deep within his long brown coat pocket and licked it. Then he carefully began to clean the grime from my face. I flinched back a little disgusted.

“Euwww… you spit on that!” He stood, looking kind of crestfallen.

“Come on, let’s get you home, your mother will be wondering where you’ve got to!”

We walked back in relative silence until we got to the stairs that led up to my flat.

“How come you got here? I mean how come you can? I ain’t supposed to talk to strangers and nobody has said nuffin’ and everyone round 'ere knows me?”

“They can see me, but they can’t quite see me, it’s safe… you're safe with me.”

“I know that!” I answered a little quickly. I took the first step up and turned back to him. He grinned and stuffed his hands into his pockets. I shook my head and laughed, then ran the rest of the way up without looking back.

As I took the scolding for being late and ripping my new jeans, I was sure I heard that same strange sound again, but it could have been the wind.


	3. A Man Out Of Time 3.

_A Man Out of Time: Three._

_Wednesday December 9th 1995 (Rose is 8)_

I liked it on the roof. You could see for miles about, see some of the land marks of the city. All those people out there getting on with their lives and I might as well be the only person in the whole world.

I would sit up there, bundled in my dad’s old anorak (a great huge, navy blue and yellow affair) that I kept in this old broken vent up there. It was old and musky smelling, but it made me feel close to him on those cold evenings I spent alone up there. Mum never knew I was there, thought I was round Shareen’s or Kelly’s… but at this point of my life, I was steering clear of her (my mum) and especially her new friend, Len.

It must have only been a few short weeks that she was with him, but it felt like forever for me at the age of eight.

I had been so happy just a few months before, I had got my bronze medal in the gymnastics championships and Mum had been so proud of me. Then she met Len and everything changed.

How could I tell Mum when she was so happy? And I couldn’t exactly place why I felt this way.

So, it was here that he found me, contemplating how life could have been and wasn’t on that cold December evening when I was eight going on thirty eight. It was well over two years since I had last seen him and half believed he had been a childish game.

I was bundled up sitting cross-legged on a small flat-roof overlooking the world when he strolled up to me in that same brown suit and long coat.

He stood beside me for some time looking out over the view and I glanced at him, wondering if I was dreaming.

“It’s a clear night... smells like snow,” he said softly after some time and I turned to him, studying his face.

“Don’t ya ever wear nuffin’ else?” was how I greeted him, although I was very pleased to see him, a friendly face in a sea of confusion that bordered on hostility.

“I like the brown… think you rather do too… in the future! How have you been?”

“Oh, you know... been busy… you was supposed to come back with a list for me, wasn’t you?”

“I was and I have it… like I said… time isn’t always that easy. And this list… I can’t promise that it’s entirely accurate, but it will give us both something to at least aim at.” He handed over a folded piece of paper, which I put straight into my pocket inside my dad’s big old coat.

“Cold?” I could tell he was laughing at me and it made me feel almost angry so I didn’t answer. “What’s up, Rose?” His voice was low and kind and I reacted to it as he climbed up onto that roof and sat beside me, his long legs buckled up in front of him. Tears pricked my eyes.

“It was alright, you know, when it was just me an’ Mum… but its diff’rent now… ain’t the same now Len’s here.”

“Len?” he asked softly, but I could feel a concern in his voice that nobody had ever had regarding me.

“My mum’s new boyfriend… he’s horrible and nasty… a bully and I don’t like him ‘cos he don’t like me!”

“So, you’re jealous because you have to share your mum?”

“No, I ain’t! Mum’s had plenty of boyfriends, John! This one’s just plain creepy!”

“Rose… he hasn’t… hurt you in anyway, has he?” 

“No! Nuffin like that! He’s just nasty… like, he puts me down all the time and does ‘orrible fings, like, he made me a drink when I was ill last munf… told me to drink it straight down and I did... it was vinegar… made me sick… he thought it was a laugh and then earlier, Mum was cooking and he came out with this thing... told me mum said I could lick the butter icing off it and I had no reason to not believe it… smell my breath.” I breathed on him and he pulled back from me, his face so screwed up that it made me laugh out loud.

“Garlic!” he spluttered.

“Yes, he made me lick the garlic crusher, but it ain’t the spiteful stuff he does… it ain’t the way he makes my mum side with him, like I’m the bad one, it’s something else… he ain’t right, you know?”

“In what way, Rose? How do you mean?”

“Somefink don’t feel right about him, he’s always sneaking about and he steals stuff... I seen him meself… and the way he smells!”

“How does he smell, Rose?”

“Like he’s gone off… like dead meat… and Mum, she don’t even notice. When he leaves the bathroom after he’s stayed overnight, it’s like something died and buried itself in there! Then there’s the noises he makes when he dozes off on the sofa.”

“Noises?”

“It’s like he’s speaking in some made-up language… all clickey and spitty… Mum gets her rag off then… only time she loses her patience… soon as he’s awake she’s all over him like a rash!”

“It does sound odd… I trust your judge of character, Rose… I’ll look into it for you, okay?”

“You trust me? ‘bout the only one who does at the moment!”

“I suspect that your Mum can’t help it… come on, get home or they’ll be looking for you.”

“Don’t wanna… can’t I come with you? She won’t miss me, not now!”

“Listen, young lady, I’m going to make this right… you get home and I will have sorted out this Len before the morning, right?” I stared at him for a long moment and all my instincts told me that he was telling me the truth.

We walked to my door together and over the balcony, I saw my Mum and Len coming home from the pub. John peered over and saw what I saw.

“That’s him?”

“Yes, smelly git!”

“Goodnight, Rose Tyler, see you soon...ish.”

“Goodnight, John, thanks for listening!” I let myself in and hurried to bed.

Len never came back again. Mum didn’t say much, said that some bloke had arrested him as an illegal immigrant, that he was going to be deported by some shadow government office and that she had always been a bit suspicious of him.

It was later the next day that I dug into my dad’s coat pocket and found the list… the next time I would see him was going to be four years away.


	4. A Man Out Of Time:  4

_A Man Out Of Time: Four  
Saturday December 24th 1999 (Rose is 12)_

Shivering on the roof, I contemplated the crumpled and worn list that I clutched in my pocket. I couldn’t believe that I was here, I mean, how cool was it to stand on a freezing roof on Christmas Eve when all your mates were out shopping in town? Not cool, not cool at all. Waiting for my childhood imaginary friend who was really real. I knew he was real because of the list. He had to be real. Besides that, all my mates had money to spend, I had... not a jot.

I sniffed and pulled that damp smelling anorak around me. I still kept it stuffed into the still broken vent and after all these years it could probably have done with a wash, but if I took it home, Mum would probably have a fit and bin it and I wasn’t letting that happen! No way!

The list hadn’t given a specific time and he had said that it wasn’t entirely accurate, so I could have been standing there wasting my day. I leant down and watched some kids a little older than me riding around the estate on their bikes. I was jealous of them. They knew nothing. Mum had lost her job three weeks ago and the social were being stingy about letting her get full benefits. Money was tight and I knew that I would be lucky to get a roast dinner come Christmas, let alone a present.

I had been after a new bike all year, had even spotted the one I wanted in Hardman’s window. He had been indulgent about it in August and I had been back many times since.

Three days ago, it had gone and Mr. Hardman had been abrupt and offish with me. I suppose he was feeling guilty for selling it, but at the time, it just felt like I was being pushed out into the cold. Of course, I couldn’t possibly tell my mum about it, she had enough to worry about without me going on about bikes.

In the distance, I heard a rumbling sound. I stilled, wondering what it could be. I hoped it wasn’t a bomb. There had been that business with Tower Bridge last year and although it was supposed to all be over, you never knew. Mum was always a little worried about that sort of thing, especially at that time of year.

Footsteps from the concrete steps leading up to the roof alerted me to the fact that I wouldn’t be alone for much longer and I hid behind a pillar, waiting for whomever it was to go.

His soft, spikey hair poked around the pillar quickly followed by those dark brown eyes, the long aquiline nose and the full mouth that housed some rather impressive teeth. Heavens, was I developing a crush on my handsome real imaginary friend?

“Found you!” he grinned and I stepped out from behind the pillar. His eyes rounded a little.

“Wotcha,” I muttered, sniffing.

“My, how you've grown!” he murmured and wrinkled his nose. I suddenly felt very self-conscious about my dad’s smelly old anorak.

“It's been four years… wot did ya expect?” I said gruffly and buried my hands deeper still into the offending coat. He grinned and stuck out his hand, wiggling his fingers at me when I didn’t react.

“Come on, let’s go and get a nice hot cuppa and catch up, you look freezing!” He continued to waggle his slender fingers at me and I took his hand just to stop him looking so ridiculous. It was as cold as mine, but it felt so right to take it, although I really didn’t want people about to see me walking hand in hand with this strange man.

“How come it was four years?”

“Because, you didn’t need me.”

“And now?”

“Now you need me… you’re hungry and cold and miserable.”

“Filled our fridge the other night, didn’t ya?”

“Yes.”

“How did ya know?”

“I knew.” As we crossed the square, I tried to remove my hand from his lest we be seen, but he gripped mine firmly in his and didn’t let go.

“People will see and fink somfink funny is up!” I hissed.

“Rose, they hardly notice me, but if you want me to let go… if it makes you uncomfortable?” I looked up at him and had the urge to tell him that I never wanted him to let go. Oh, Gawd, I was ‘getting it bad’, as my mate Shareen used to say!

“Nah… s’alrigh’” I muttered, gripping his thin hand tighter still. He nodded and we continued to walk on. We walked down to the local shops towards the café. The space in the window where the bike had stood was still there and I slowed to look in. He slowed with me. Looking at the space.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

“Nah… was just daydreams… silly… come on, you was gonna get me a cuppa and a bacon sarnie!” I pulled him to the café.

“Bacon sarnie? Cheeky!” Of course he ended up buying me the full English breakfast and happily tucked into his own as I stuffed my face. The smelly coat was discarded and we were the only occupants at the café.

“So, of all the things in the world that a bright girl like you might want and you set your heart on a bicycle?” he said after a long while. I spluttered on my tea.

“Do you know everything, then?” I said when I had got my breath back.

“I know a great deal, me, not always a good thing, but I do know an awful lot, yes.”

“I meant about me!”

“Oh, well, I know you well; I certainly haven’t invaded your privacy… I told you…”

“Yes… in the future… so, do you know me when I'm a grown up?”

“You… you changed the subject on me! We were discussing bicycles!” I sat back and shrugged.

“Go anywhere on a bike, don’t cost… escape… maybe get a paper round next year… have me own money… bit of freedom.”

“Not for play, for a means of transport, then?” I smiled sadly at him and leant forward.

“Yeah, but it would be fun at the same time!” I could tell my eyes were shining and I knew he could almost read the depths of my disappointment. I shut my eyes, blinked away said disappointment and accepted my lot.

“Tough cookie, Rose Tyler… I just thought twelve year old girls in the last year of the twentieth century hankered after mobile phones?”

“Who would I ring? No, not for me… doesn’t matter, you don’t miss wot you never had, that’s wot my Mum always says!” he smiled sadly and sipped his tea. The mince pies baking in the ovens drifted their aroma to our nostrils and he grinned again.

We had a great afternoon, chatting away and drinking pots of tea. Nobody bothered us and we were so at ease with one another. It was getting dark when he finally said that he had to leave. I didn’t want him to go.

“Take me with you?”

“Oh, Rose, I can’t! What about your mum? What about kidnap?”

“I know, it’s just… I miss you when you’re not here and it is so long!”

“Only a few months… I'll be back in the summer… it’s on the list!” He walked me back to my stairs holding onto my hand again and laughed at my descriptions of our school carol concert.

“Have a Happy Christmas, Rose Tyler,” he smiled as he stood at the bottom of the stair.

“Yeah, I might go and decorate the flat if Mum hasn’t bothered yet; she has been trying to sort out work all week."

“She’ll find something in the new year, no worries!”

“I hope so!”

“Oh, I know so!” He grinned and I left quickly because I really didn’t want to. It was when I got in that I realised I had left my dad’s coat in the café.

Next morning, I was woken by the shrill voice of my Mum.

“Rose, darling, get up, it’s Christmas and I think I’m hallucinating!” I pulled myself out of bed and trudged into our front room.

The tree I had put up last night was no longer plastic and three feet tall, but spruce and to the ceiling. It was decorated and a stack of pressies for both of us sat under it. The bike that I had been ogling in Hardman’s window all year leant against the wall with a matching scarlet bow tied to the shiny handle bars.

“That ain’t all… look in the kitchen!” The turkey was huge, it sat at the table already dressed and ready to go into the oven. Everything that we would have dreamed for in a Christmas dinner was there. “It’s like the end of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’… I wonder whodunit?”

“Maybe Father Christmas is real after all?” I said hugging her tightly.

Later on, I stood on the rooftop and contemplated my friend from the future and wondered what I had done to deserve him. It must have been him, I decided. How, was another question and one that wouldn’t be answered for many more years.

I found my father’s anorak neatly laundered and folded and placed back into its place in the broken vent. 

It seemed that he was a stickler for details, this handsome time travelling stranger of mine.


	5. A Man Out Of Time: 5

_Monday August 14th 2000 (Rose is 13)_

I felt woozy. The cider was bitter and it felt like it had ripped the skin from my throat. Shareen giggled nervously at my face and turned her eyes to the older girls.

“Wot’s it like, Rosey?” she whispered. The older girl whose name was Michelle passed the plastic bottle to Shareen and she took it and sipped cautiously.

“Nah… not like that… like yer mate ‘ere… nice big downer… get you pissed up real quick… be such a laugh!”

“Chelle, you’re taking it too far!” said another girl, Tracey, as she looked around her furtively. Shareen, bolstered by the older girl’s nervousness took another swig and coughed violently.

I had drunk quite a bit by now. To this day, I don’t really know why I agreed to going along. Kell’ had said she was going and didn’t show up, chickened out. Shareen was a little younger than me, and I felt responsible for her.

Shareen was looking ill and then Michelle handed her a cigarette.

“Ave a fag... it’ll make ya feel better!” I moved, or rather swayed between Shareen and the proffered cigarette.

“No, don’t do that, Shaz… you really don’t wanna go down that path!”

“Wot are ya? ‘Er muvver?” Michelle moved towards me and then an evil grin crossed her face. “Kay, you smoke it and I won’t make ‘er, yeah?” She took a cigarette from the pack, lit it and held it out to me.

I was scared, but the instinct to protect my friend was far greater. I found that the cider was giving me some sort of courage. I took the cigarette from her and was just raising it to my lips when a hand came over the top of Michelle’s head and snatched it from me.

“I’ll take that... it could be evidence from now on!” He was there, my handsome time traveller. He had come to save the day! Again!

“What the f…?”

“And swearing in public? Tsk… tsk…” He pulled out a black leather wallet and flashed it about. I didn’t see it, but Shareen told me later that it said he was some kind of undercover officer.

“Who the bleedin’ ‘ell are you?” screeched Michelle taking a step back from him. She had seemed enormous moments before but his height and demeanor seemed to instantly shrink her.

“Your worst nightmare, little girl… you’re in trouble... big trouble. I need your name, address and telephone number… now!”

“No, Mister, don’t, me dad’ll kill me... I won’t do it again… give us a chance!” John observed her thoughtfully.

“You get one chance… do anything like this again and I’ll be taking you in! Now, scram!” There was little hesitation before the two bigger girls ran away without a backward glance.

Shareen looked at me, “you coming, Rose?”

“You get on, I’ll explain it all to him, it weren’t our fault he knows that… go on, go home… you got off lucky!” Shareen hesitated looking from me to John in bewilderment.

“Best do as your friend says, young lady… she’ll be fine with me!” Shareen startled at his voice and then, she too, turned heel and ran away.

“Rose Tyler… why do you always seem to get into these scrapes?” He turned to me and smiled broadly.

“Scrapes? What scrapes you found me in before then? And anyway, you… you wasn’t supposed to come until tomorrow… it’s on my list!” My voice dipped and slurred slightly. I felt very odd and couldn’t help but notice how extremely handsome he was. 

“How much of that did you drink?” I swayed slightly and he caught me as I stumbled. He smelt amazing. I was a girl growing up on a council estate, I had hardly ever been anywhere but I remember, even then in the state I was in, thinking how I would love to bottle his scent and keep it forever.

He held me up and walked me around the park until we found a bench that was quite isolated.

“What?” I asked as I caught him looking at me.

“I just don’t understand… I thought you were sensible, Rose… why would you?”

“Cos… not that it’s any of your business... just cos it relieves the boredom!”

“Bored? Oh, no… how can you be bored... you’re a child, you have so much to fill your head with still?”

“Not that much of a child… not any more… what’s it to you anyway... you say you’re a friend in the future… well, thanks for helping me out an’ all... I was out me depth, but I really don’t need a lecture!” It would have been a grand speech had I not at this point felt suddenly very nauseous. He grabbed the back of my neck firmly and pushed my head down. I retched and retched. The glowing shame a distant inevitability.

I must have dozed off for a while because when I woke up, I was leaning against him heavily. He smiled and tried to pass me a bottle of water that he seemed to have produced out of thin air.

I groaned.

“Better?”

“No… ow… me 'ead… is killin' me…”

“You’ll live… plenty of this to rehydrate you and you’ll be right as rain!” He fed me some water from the bottle and it dribbled down my chin.

“I’m not a baby!” I snapped, wiping my chin on my sleeve and taking the bottle from him. I swigged from it, eyeing him over it. He continued to grin in the most irritating of ways. “What you grinning at?” I asked eventually.

He knocked me gently with his shoulder.

“You… teenage crushes…”

“Wha’?”

“You told me that you’re falling for me... was very funny while you were vomiting… sweet... Rose Tyler with a school girl crush!”

“Are you taking the Mick? Anyways, I was drunk it don’t count and you’re old enough to be my... to be my… oh whatever, it don’t count, I don’t even remember saying nothing!”

“You can trust me, you really did!” Still with that inane grin and then I floored him.

“Why’d you look so chuffed about it? You could get locked up... I’m thirteen, people might get the wrong idea… are we… like a couple in the future? Is that it?”

“You know you can’t ask questions about the future Rose… that’s cheating!”

“Well, you asked for it!” We stopped for a while, sitting there in the August twilight. I drank from the bottle and eyed him furtively from the side. He was wonderful. He was right. I had a silly teenage crush on him.

“How’s the head?”

“Yeah... better… I’m an idiot… got meself in a stupid situation!”

“You did, but you were protecting your friend… you redeemed yourself there a little.”

“Glad you approve… so is this why you came here a day early… to stop me making a complete idiot of meself?”

“I can’t answer that one Rose, the list isn’t an exact thing, it’s an approximation… maybe there is something hidden in the subconscious that made me turn up today…” He was thinking aloud, but I sort of got what he said.

“Like in the future you knew how today could have turned out, so you stopped it from… getting out of hand?”

“Oh, see, Rose Tyler, even now at this age… you’re good!”

“Well, at the moment, I don’t feel it.”

“Let’s get you home… you can sleep it off. You’ll be fine in the morning!”

We walked home through the park slowly, chatting about school and my paper round and my baby sitting and all the ordinary things. He was still so easy to talk to. He never talked about himself though, and I accepted this for my own selfish age and for the rules of the future that he seemed so anxious to comply to.

He left me at the flat door. 

“See you soon… keep your sensible head on, won’t you?” I nodded and smiled at him because he was wonderful and he still thought I was worth it even when I had behaved so badly.

I watched him walking away from the balcony, his long coat flapping in the wind. I reflected on my feelings as I watched him shrink into the distance.

I was too immature and inexperienced for a man like him; I needed to grow up a bit. A lot.

So, that was my resolve. I had a bit of time before I was due to see him again.


	6. A Man Out Of Time: 6

_Saturday April 27th 2002 (Rose’s 15th Birthday)_

 

The music was so loud that it vibrated right through me and my body twitched from the constant beat. 

I looked over the balcony at the mass of dancing bodies and the flashing lights. I seemed to have lost my friends.

I turned to the doors behind me and entered the ladies'. The girls were crowding the mirrors. Someone was throwing up in one of the cubicles.

I elbowed my way to one of the mirrors and pulled my mascara from my breast pocket. As I layered up some more dark black on my already encrusted lashes, a fight broke out between two girls beside me. I pushed my way out, unperturbed by the screams and the flying hair, and wandered the club in search of my so-called friends.

I’d been hanging with this crowd for a few months. They were older than me and sometimes I got the impression I was just their little pet, a mascot. But, they were an alright bunch. They looked out for each other, and the scene they were into was far more exciting than the stuff my childhood friends participated in.

I mean the music and the choice. When it came to either, hanging around in the park, avoiding pushers or dancing to the pulsating beats that left my eardrums ringing for the rest of the week, I knew where I wanted to be.

All my old friends, still at school, were headed towards pregnancies or the dole, and I knew what I wanted. I was going to college… get some A-levels and become part of the student set.

Hopefully, I would go on to university and really make something of myself. I was going to get out of the ‘ghetto’. That would show him exactly how responsible I was.

I simply couldn’t find them. Would they really just move on without me? Just like that? I decided to go and look outside. They might be waiting for me there.

Buster grinned at me, his broad shoulders and bald head a classic stereotype. “Alright, little Rose?”

“Yeah… you seen Zeb or Mags?”

“Seen em and ‘eard em! They were rowing like you don’t know what... I ‘ad to move 'em off! Seems that Lofty has been meddling again!”

“No way… where’d they go? Was Spit with em?”

“Nah, ain’t seen ‘im, but I wouldn’t go looking for _him_ anyways… want me to call you a taxi?”

“Ain’t got taxi money, mate… I’ll be alright!”

“Don’t you go and Jane Fonda about on yer Todd, will ya? You’ve got more sense, ain’t ya, little Rose?”

“There’s loads of people about, Buster, ain’t exactly late, is it?”

“All the same… you take care… there’s some nasty people about!”

“I’ll probably find Mags round the corner, won’t I?”

“Just give me the nod if you change your mind, 'kay?”

“'Kay!” I knew I shouldn’t walk around town on my own, but I knew where I was. I wasn’t far from home really, just a few busy streets. I could look after myself anyway; I’d been doing it all my life so far... mostly.

It was dark and there were quite a few people about, that was true. They were all drunk and loud and a group of young men started shouting at me, hurling rude remarks at me that made me feel a little uncomfortable.

I put my head down and walked quickly on, relief seeping through me as I realised that they weren’t following.

“Rose, that you?” I walked smack into the skinny, snub-nosed leech of my friends.

“Spit! Where is everyone? I look round and you’d all gone!”

“It’s alright… we forgot and only just realised… I came back to find you!”

“Where’s Mags and Zeb? Buster said they were fighting again… said that Lofty had turned up!”

“Yeah… he did... saw him off, though… you can imagine… they’re around the corner waiting for us…”

I was so relieved that it didn’t cross my mind that he wasn’t telling the truth, and it was some time before I realised that he had led me to a very deserted dead end alley.

“Spit?” He didn’t reply, just grinned nastily, yellow teeth glowing in the amber street lights. He moved towards me and I backed away. My head was spinning.

His grey, clammy hand touched my arm, stroked it. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way… but it’s been coming a long time, you know it!” he hissed, a lizard like tongue darting from his dry, thin lips.

“I’ll take the hard way, then!” I spat back at him, pulling my arm from his grip.

“More’s the fun!” He lunged at me, but I was ready for him. I pulled my leg back and let it fly in between his legs. As he crumpled forward, I bought my knee into contact with his face and as his head flew back up, I cracked down on his skull with my joined fists. He fell to the floor groaning, his nose bleeding profusely. 

The wind had picked up a little and I heard a noise a little like a helicopter a few streets away.

As I began to leave, I saw a tall figure striding towards me. I shrank into the shadows, fearful that it was one of Spit’s more questionable acquaintances come to seek him out.

“Rose?” The light caught his face and relief flooded through me.

“John? What the bleedin’ hell are you doing here?” I ran to him and was rewarded with a huge hug.

“Come to find my favourite girl on her birthday!”

“But... it wasn’t on the list?”

“I wanted to surprise you! What have we here, then?” He toed the pathetic crumpled heap of a half-man that lay in the same position I had felled him to.

“Nobody important… dealt with…”

“He didn’t… hurt you, Rose?”

“Hurt me? Course he never… didn’t give him the chance... fat lot of good you’d have been turning up five minutes too late!”

“I was only going to escort you home! You said you walked home alone… never said about…” He stopped abruptly, realising that he was letting on future events. I grinned and linked his arm with my own.

“Walk me home? On me birthday? You can at least stump up for some chips!”

“I could if I had my wallet!”

“Cheap date you are! Come to visit a girl on her birthday and she ends up paying out for a bag o’ chips!”

“I didn’t come empty handed… I bought you a present!” He handed me a small package.

“Maybe you’re forgiven then… come on. Let’s go and find a café, I could murder a brew!”

We walked along the streets aimlessly, chatting about stuff, and although neither of us had quite forgotten what might have happened down that dark alley, we neither one of us, mentioned it. My fear fed the adrenalin that fought my corner, and a sweet cup of tea was what I needed the most.

The café was hot, steamy and empty, just the way we liked it.

“Won’t your mum wonder where you are?”

“Nah... It’s early yet… she trusts me… besides, Mickey’ll cover for me!” The mouthful of tea he had just taken must have choked him.

“Mickey?” he spluttered.

“Yeah… good mate of mine... old family friend... salt, he is... why, do you know him? No, don’t say it… not yet?” He nodded by way of reply and I grinned at him.

I was fiddling with the little package that he had handed me and he nodded at it. “It isn’t much… but they’re very you…”

I pulled off the paper and opened the little box. “Hoops?”

“Yes… is that ok?”

“I love 'em… they’re so big! Are they gold?”

“Yes… no… well… the place where I originate from's equivalent.”

“Help me put them on?” I knew I was being a little too much, but he truly was irresistible and I knew that I was charming him. I was more a woman than a girl now and I was pretty sure that this time traveller and I were an item in the future. Otherwise, why else would he make such an effort?

“Rose, what are you thinking?” His fingers were helping me with the huge hoops and a shiver ran down my neck.

“I was wondering how many other girls you visit through time? How many other ear rings like this adorn hopeful ears?” He stopped what he was doing and placed both hands on the sides of my shoulders. Gently he pulled me around to face him.

“Nobody else has a pair like this… I visit only you.” His eyes were blazing and I got the distinct impression that he was going to kiss me. But the moment was gone as quickly as it came and he shook himself, sat back down and sipped his tea.

It was easy to talk to him, even after a moment like that and so we did until my eyelids drooped.

“Come on, sleepy head, let’s get you home!” We wandered slowly back, saying very little, but the silence was comforting.

He stopped at the stairs leading to our balcony.

“Rose… when you tell me about what happened; will you promise to tell me it all?”

“Oh, John… I think you might be breaking your own rules now! Besides, I sorted him out good and proper, didn’t I?”

“I suppose that’s the best I’m going to get?”

“Yep… thanks for my hoops… they’re brilliant!”

“Happy birthday, Rose Tyler!” He hugged me hard and I inhaled that wonderful smell of him before he let me go.

“See you soon?”

“Oh, yes, definitely!” He watched me right through my door, making sure I was safely in, so I had to run to my bedroom window to try and catch one last glimpse of him.

But I saw nothing. It was like he just disappeared into the night.

It would be another two years before I saw him again.


	7. The man Out Of Time: Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I admit being just a little bit inspired by Practical Magic!

_Saturday October 2nd 2004 (Rose is 17)_

 

_I’m lying in the sun. I’m hanging by the pool. I’ve got a million friends. You might say life is perfect. But I don’t care about any of it. In fact I have only two words to say to you. Jimmy Stone._

He was beautiful. His family was originally from Bulgaria, so he had this whole Dracula image thing going on. He was just so intense, completely obsessed with me and at first this made me feel very special.

I am guilty to say that I hardly gave thought to my wonderful secret time travelling man when I first got involved with Jimmy Stone. He swept me off my feet with his sultry good looks and his promise of a more exciting time.

He was a traveller, a gypsy, a Pikey, whatever you’d like to call it. One thing I do know, one minute I was about to start college and the next, I was in Spain on the back of his motorbike inhaling his musty, leather biker jacket.

It was a long, hot summer, I was over seventeen and my mother was oblivious. I had told her I was going with a group of friends and she eventually agreed to let me go, believing that I would be back for college. I wasn’t.

Jimmy pulled me into his world, obsessed with me to a point that I felt I was losing myself. I was an extension of him. It was exciting. I thought it was the life experience that I should be having.

The cracks started to show after a few months as the season ended and the work began to dry up.

Jimmy was good with women. The older ones loved to have him around. They would offer him things for his… company. I found it hard to bear and he would come back to whatever room or caravan or tent we were sleeping in and find me in tears.

Gradually, as he spent longer and longer away from me; I began to find me again and the few friends that I had left that were still travelling with us encouraged me to spend time with them instead of waiting home alone on Jimmy Stone.

I had never seen anyone in a jealous rage up to then, but Jimmy Stone put paid to that.

When you’re young and you believe that you’re in love, you have a way of convincing yourself that when someone reacts like that, that they must really love you. My first bruise was proof that Jimmy Stone wanted me all for himself.

The first morning after that first time, he was so sweet, bringing me breakfast in bed with a single red, rose in a vase. I felt it was all going to be alright. I had never been so wrong.

Jimmy Stone was obsessed with me. I would wake in the night with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach and he would be staring right at me, smoking the strong Camel cigarette’s he always craved.

“I was just thinking about you,” he would whisper.

“You are always thinking about me. Jimmy, I need to use the loo.”

“Let’s go together.”

“Jimmy, come on!”

“I’m just kidding. Go.” Only, he wasn’t really kidding. He didn’t want me out of his sight.

Things got worse. He began to imagine that I was up to no good when he was ‘working’. He would accuse me of all manner of things. I wanted to escape but I had no means. Jimmy had even hidden my passport.

It was this night that I was making my bid for freedom. I had no friends remaining there. They had all trailed away to their own lives and left me with Jimmy Stone parting from me with only with warnings and unheeded advice.

Jimmy had laid into me badly that previous night, I was bruised and frightened and I had had enough. I searched so hard for that passport, tearing our room apart. It was nowhere to be found.

No, money and without possessions, I fled into the night. I had no idea where I was going, but all I knew was that I had to run.

The sound of Jimmy’s returning motorbike drummed in my ears as I scurried through the town, trying to be invisible.

He would find me. I knew he would. I ran and ran, imagining that he was after me. That he was going to catch me and hurt me and leave me to die in a ditch.

The country road out of town was narrow and remote and I crept through the trees, trying to be invisible. The sound of a motorbike in the distance, made my stomach lurch and my heart pound.

I ran into a field and hid behind a hedge, my breath catching in my throat. I sat down and leant against a tree. 

The darkness was all around me. I felt like I had been engulfed and would never find my way home again. I was lost.

I listened for a long while and after deciding that his bike was long gone, I made my way back onto the road. I stood still, barely able to see a thing, just a faint outline of the dusty lane. Keeping to the trees, I began to head back towards the town, clutching at the belief that I may find my passport and get out before he returned.

From nowhere there came the sound of heavy footsteps behind me and before I could run, an arm grabbed me roughly and turned me around.

“No! Jimmy, no!”

“Thought you could run from me? Oh, no, little Rose… don’t you understand? You belong to me! I have marked you as mine… you can never ever leave me!”

“Get off me!” I struggled desperately, but his fingers bit into my arm.

“All alone in the middle of nowhere… you and me… anything could happen… who would know? I could just say you ran off… my Rose forever buried in the woods!”I said nothing, knowing that any pleas would only fuel his need to hurt me all the more. His fingers moved to my throat. Caressing and stroking, chilling me to the bone. “I wanted to keep you, but alas, it seems I cannot… and if I can’t have you, my sweet, Rose, then no one can...” His words stopped in mid-flow. His fingers dropped from my throat and in the darkness I heard someone, or something behind him.

“I think Rose can decide for herself!” The familiar voice of my childhood saviour rang out and both relief and dread ran right through me.

“What?” Jimmy’s furious voice rang out and I backed away from him.

“I said I think Rose can make her own decisions and you obviously are no longer one of them!”

“John… no, don’t! He’ll kill you!” I sobbed, still backing off.

“Me? Oh, I don’t think so… do you, Sunny Jim?” I sensed Jimmy’s attack before he actually launched himself at John’s voice and heard his body hit the ground as he missed him.

“Too slow!” taunted John. Jimmy growled and was up and after John in a flash, hurling abuse at the pair of us.

“You want a piece of her? Well, maybe I'll let you… but you will have to ask my permission… she belongs to me… she’s my _wife_ now!”

“I think you mind find that it’s quite the opposite! Enough said… there’s only one way to deal with bullies like you and I intend to deliver that punishment. Rose, don’t go away, I’ll be right back!” There followed a grunt and a moan, a few distant rustling footsteps and then a long, long silence. I shook in the black, black darkness.

“Rose?” A blue light flickered to life and brown eyes looked into mine. I whimpered and fell against him. Long rough arms encircled my sobbing and bruised body and words of comfort filled my ears. I felt like I had come home.

“He… he… he…” I gasped.

“I know… let me see…” His torch swept across my face and over my arms, and then it went out. “I should have got here sooner… I tried… I’m sorry…”

“Not your fault…. My fault… I’m an idiot!”

“You’re not! Don’t think like that and never let anyone… not anyone tell you any different, right?”

“But…”

“Sshh… you’re safe and he’s gone… I’m taking you home.”

“But… how?” 

“If you don’t ask me any questions, then I won’t have to tell you any lies… I’m going to help you get some rest now.”

“John…” His long, cool fingers touched at my temples and before I could ask him anything, I was asleep.

I have no idea how we got back. I must have slept for hours. Was I drugged? I don’t think so, but the next thing I was aware of was him waking me at the bottom of the concrete steps below my flat back in the Powell estate in London.

“Rose?” My eyes opened wide and stared into his. I knew that he had done something wonderful, something I couldn’t ask about, not yet anyway. I knew that we were something very special in the future. More than friends. Somehow, this marvellous man had found my passport and got us on a ferry and home and all the while, I had remained asleep.

“I…” 

“No words… you’re safe now… go home. I’ll see you soon. Promise.”

I slowly made my way up the steps, my confusion still blurred from the sleep and when I turned, he had gone. I slipped into the flat, thankful that Mum was still sleeping and quietly shut myself in my room.

As I got undressed, feeling the need to sleep even more, I became aware of two things. One, that the clock on my radio told me that very little time had passed since I was standing in that dark lane fearful for my life and two, that there were no marks on my entire body that Jimmy Stone had inflicted upon me. Not one.


	8. The Man Out Of Time: Eight

_Sunday October 31st 2004 (Rose is 17)_

Halloween. The Americans celebrate this occasion far more ardently than us. Here, it’s just an excuse for the kids to egg and flour each other. It can be a laugh if you like rubber masks and avoiding the pigs.

It was stupid that we got ourselves into this. I mean, we were older; I had my interview at Henrik’s next day. It wouldn’t look good to go in marked, would it? But I was as involved in the egg war as the rest of them and I knew sooner or later that Mickey and me would be discovered hiding behind the bins on the corner near mine.

It was light relief after my summer of hell and Mickey had been lovely, he really had. He wasn’t the most romantic of people, thought that a good date was down the pub watching the footie, but he was kind and caring and Mum approved. We sort of fell into a routine with one another and it made me feel safe and wanted. I needed something like that at the time.

I was still confused about my wonderful stranger and how he had rescued me from Jimmy Stone and got me home without a passport, but at the same time I was so relieved and accepted that because of his circumstances not everything would always make sense or fall in the right place.

He had promised to visit me sooner and the dates he had given me on the list were all used up, but I still expected no explanations from him.

“They’re near!” hissed Mickey, holding me closer to him. His heart was beating nine to the dozen and his smile bought me out of my thoughts.

Suddenly a large group of youths rounded the corner. They were making such a noise and all wore ‘scream’ masks and black hoodies. They surrounded the pair of us, pelting us in flour and eggs. We crouched in a ball protecting our faces, but a noise rumbled around the corner, disturbing the attack and alerting the gang to another possible victim.They took off in that direction, but after a few minutes, they returned at top speed, passing us and disappearing into the darkness.

“For chrissake, you two! Bloody run!” screeched one of them, a familiar female voice. I had words with Shareen later, I can tell you.

Mickey wasn’t exactly the bravest of sorts and he was off with the group like a shot, ungallantly, leaving me behind. Not that I wanted to run. That noise was becoming somewhat familiar to me.

John rounded the corner with a look of vague amusement, hands in pockets.

“What you grinning at?” I chirped, trying to brush the flour and egg off me.

“You, having fun… as you should be doing!”

“Yeah… great fun, hiding in the dark from a bunch of over grown kids and getting plastered in…”

“Cake mix?” He stepped right up to me, a handkerchief raised. He swiped gently at my face and my stomach turned several somersaults. His eyebrows rose right up and he handed me the piece of cotton and stepped back.

“Yeah, well… gets boring round here, anyway, I figured if we got involved, it would save the littl’uns getting egged.”

“Quite right too, very honourable... unlike your friend, Rickey… didn’t see him for dust.”

“His name’s Mickey… don’t recall ever mentioning him actually.” He didn’t reply. “Besides, he’s the last person I want to talk about.”

“Oh?” We began to walk towards the rooftop stairs without thinking about it and his hand slid into mine.

“How did you do it? 

“Do what?”

“Did I travel in time with you?”

“No.” We climbed the metal steps and made our way to the wall.

“I don’t understand.”

“There are some things I can’t explain, Rose. It could damage the fragment of time.”

“And you visiting me the way you do… that’s okay is it?” He wrinkled his nose up at me and smiled again. “And you can stop grinning at me like an idiot. You said things that implied… we… us…”

“Rose… I really can’t tell you… I just need you to trust me on this… can you do that?”

“With my life,” I answered quietly after a long, loaded pause. We sat in silence for a while. “I have no more dates.”

“No.”

“Will there be more?”

“Not like this.” My heart began to feel very heavy in my chest.

“You’re not coming back?”

“Rose… listen… your life is set to change. You’re going to meet someone.”

“But… I… I … don’t want anyone else!” 

As if by prompt, Mickey’s voice rose in the distance, “Rose!” John’s eyebrow raised at me as if he were poking fun at me.

“I want you!” I whispered, turning from him.

He stood in front of me and raised my chin up. “I can’t interfere with what is fixed in your life Rose. It has to happen, you understand? What I have done here, visiting you is pure indulgence.”

“Rescuing me? Indulgence?”

“You would have survived; I just did a little damage control.”

“Cheers mate!” My head turned from him again, but he pulled it back.

“This man… he is your key to me. That’s the best way I can describe it without making a mess!”

“Key?” 

“Rose… he mustn’t know about me, and you two, you will be great friends. Even when you do actually meet me, you must never tell. I will be in my timeline by then. This is really important.”

“You make it sound so complicated.”

“It is… you have to live life as it comes from now on!”

“And this you… the one I… you… will I ever meet him?”

“Yes.” He was holding stuff back, and I gazed into his dark brown eyes trying to read whatever might be in them, but I couldn’t. 

I tilted my head up and kissed him. At first, he responded as if it were a natural reaction, but then he pulled back, shaking his head. There were tears in those dark eyes. “Rose…” he whispered on a shattered breath and I felt his misery. It was hard and intense and I wanted to pull him into my arms and comfort him as he had comforted me so often during my life. But he had made it quite clear that we had a journey to go on before I would fully understand and this was just the beginning.

The next time I was to meet him; I wouldn’t even be able to discuss what we were to one another with him. Whatever that was.

Mickey found me in tears an hour later and mistakenly thought that I was upset with all the Halloween shenanigans.

The next day, I had my interview at Henrik’s and got the job on the spot. I started at the famous department store a week later.


	9. The Man At The End Of Time

_New Year’s Day 2005… just... (Rose is 17)_

It had been a mixed up evening. Not the most exciting of parties, but Mum had really wanted me to be there with Jimbo and it had all gone a little wrong.

My new job was alright. Not the most exciting of things to do, but I liked the independence. Money and the means to help Mum with the bills. 

I even got a decent discount on some of the designer clothes I had never been able to afford before.

Life was good, but I really wasn’t happy. I wasn’t going to see the John I knew and loved for a long time. I would meet other people, a man who was ‘the key’ whatever that meant, and John himself, but he wouldn’t know me.

Mickey and Mum put my moods down to whatever had happened with Jimmy Stone. The police had been around the estate calling at doors of known acquaintances of his (me included). Apparently, he had been systematically stealing off rich middle aged women all over Europe and then he had disappeared without a trace.

They questioned me, but accepted my explanation of running off as witnesses had confirmed how badly he had been treating me. They didn’t take it any further than a courtesy call, much to my relief because I really had no clue how to explain a number of things.

And so, here we were tonight, hurrying through the cold to get home and to Mickey who would have been doing his nut. The distant chime of Big Ben had just sounded and I was less than happy.

“I hate that, now I’ve missed it! Mickey’s gonna be calling me everything… this is all your fault!”

“No it’s not! It’s Jimbo’s, he said he was gonna give us a lift home and then he said his axle had broke, I can’t help it!” 

“Get rid of him, Mum, he’s useless.”

“Listen to you, with a mechanic… be fair though, my time of life, I’m not gonna do much better.” We came to a stand still and I felt guilty, rubbing her shoulder.

“Don’t be like that…” I smoothed a loose strand of her hair from her face and she looked up into the snow filled sky. “There could be someone out there.”

Mum sighed, not looking convinced and I knew who she was thinking about. “Maybe… one day.” Then she sort of shook herself “Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year!” I chirruped back, hugging her, she rubbed my back and we pulled apart. As I turned and headed towards Mickey’s block I shot back at her.” Don’t stay out late!”

“Try and stop me!” she muttered heading towards our block.

I wrapped my arms about me to shield myself from the cold, but as I rounded the corner I was disturbed by a mutter.

“Ow…” I stopped and looked into the shadows, thoughts of jimmy Stone cluttering my head. It wasn’t him. It was John. And yet it wasn’t quite John.

“You alright, mate?” I was confused. He hadn’t told me about this, therefore he couldn’t have known about this. This meant, I must not let him know that I knew who he was. My mind was working overtime but John had said, hadn’t he?

“Yeah…” He was in the shadows, almost as if trying to conceal himself and he didn’t sound at all alright. I was scared, but even that I couldn’t show.

“Too much to drink?” It was all I could think of to say and not at all what I wanted to say.

“Yeah…” This was so unlike him. He normally talked nine to the dozen. 

“Anyway… Happy New Year?” I had to go before I said something and 'hurt the fragment of time.'

“And you…” I turned to walk away from him as quickly as I could before I threw myself upon him and begged that he told me what was wrong. “What year is this?” he called after me and I spun around surprised. John always knew when he was, that was part of being a time traveller.

“Blimey… how much have you had?” I tried to see his eyes, wondering if he really was drunk and knowing he wasn’t.

His voice sounded a little hurt as he responded with a slight murmur, “Oh…”

“2005… January the first.” 

“2005?” he repeated and I nodded dumbly. “Tell you what… I bet you’re gonna to have a really great year.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I kept it short and simple. “Yeah?” I could see him nodding in the shadows and although I was concerned for him now, somehow this statement reassured me. It would all be alright in the end. “See ya!” I said and grinned at him, showing him it was okay, that everything would work out. Then I turned and ran for the door to Mickey’s block only glancing back as I entered into the stairwell.

I had intended to watch him go, make sure he was alright, but Mickey was standing at the top of the stairs with a face full of thunder.

By the time I got up to his flat, him moaning all the while; and looked out of the window, there was no trace of my wonderful time travelling stranger.

I listened to Mickey’s silly rantings and thought of the coming year. He had said. It was going to be a really great year. 

“And don’t think you can get round me with that smile, Rose!” Mickey muttered and the next thing I knew I was crying and I didn’t even know why.

I turned back to the window and leant my forehead on the cold glass, looking out into the lonely night. He was out there somewhere, all alone and he had needed to see me.

I wondered if it would always be like this.


	10. Lessons In Survival

_Saturday 30th April 2005: Rose is 18_

It was one of those evenings when all I wanted to do was get home and slob out in front of the box, have some beans and fall asleep pretty quickly. There was football on at the local, so I knew Mickey probably wouldn’t be bothering me, not tonight at least.

Mickey, I sort of smiled to myself. We had started seeing each other as mates not long after I got back from Europe. Mates had evolved into something a little more. He was kind, made me feel safe and sure of myself and after all I had been through, it was kind of reassuring to have him about.

It was simple, uncomplicated. No ties. He would meet me for lunch on Saturdays when he could and I spent quite a bit of time at his place. At least after he had cleaned it. His family and mine had been friends since before I was born. His mum and Nan had helped my mum a great deal after my dad had been killed by a hit and run driver when I was a baby.

There is safety in that, when someone knows you that well, isn’t there? 

But just recently, I got so bored. Work was mundane and un-taxing and I just wanted something… anything… to _happen_. And Mickey didn’t get that at all. He was happy to work in the garage all day and spend the evenings in the pub or with me and never go out of his comfort zone. I wanted more out of life.

And of course, my thoughts often strayed to my wonderful time traveller, but he had been very firm about it all, hadn’t he? I was to get on with living and not spend my life waiting for him. It was all going to happen one day, else how would he have been able to come back to me in the past?

So, I liked Mickey’s company, but he wasn’t ‘the one’ and tonight, I definitely wanted some alone time. A hot bath was an appealing idea.

The shop shut and Alice came up to me grinning, “Do us a favour, Rose… meeting Jerome for a drink and I want to get off... you wouldn’t take the lottery down to Wilson for me would ya?” 

The basements were really creepy after shutdown, I can tell you, and none of us liked going down there, but Wilson was alright. When I got there though, his office door was locked.

“Wilson? I’ve got the lottery money. Wilson, you there?” It was odd that he didn’t surface as soon as I got down there; he was usually quite territorial about the whole place.

I looked down the corridor, wondering where on Earth he could’ve got to,” I can’t hang about; they’re closing the shop, Wilson? Ohh... come on!” Then I saw a shadow flicker at the end of the corridor and even though I was feeling nervous about it, I went after it, calling for Wilson all the while.

Anyway, I thought maybe it was imagination, but my curiosity was piqued and I found myself in this large storage room. I carried on to the far wall, where there was another door, but it was locked. And that’s when the door I came through slammed shut.

I honestly thought it was Derek and the boys from sixth floor having a laugh, but when the shop dummies started coming to life and moving towards me, I was terrified. Not even Jimmy Stone had scared me that much.

This one dummy was moving towards me, backing me up against the wall, its arm raising to strike…

Then out of the blue a large, cool hand, grabbed mine, pulled my arm and instructed me with one word. A word that will be part of me for the rest of my life. 

“Run!”

Without really looking, I took off with him down another corridor, the shop dummies chasing all the while. We fell into a lift and after a struggle with an arm, the doors shut and the lift moved up. It was then that I had an opportunity to study my savior.

He was tall and broad, oldish, mid-forties, I’d of guessed at. He had short cropped hair, a long roman nose and rather protrusive ears. But his eyes… oh, so blue… so deep. He wore a battered old black leather jacket and black jeans. He seemed dangerous and wise all rolled into one. I was both scared and fascinated at the same time.

I can barely remember what we talked about, but it was fast and he seemed to not want me about, told me that Wilson was dead, and then he told me he was going to blow up the building and I was to trot off home as if nothing had happened.

As I hurried away the building above me burst into flames. I looked up, still holding the plastic arm of the shop dummy, with John’s words ringing in my ears.

”Your life is set to change. You’re going to meet someone.”

I made my way home lost in thought.

He turned up at mine the very next day. Was it by accident, I don’t know, but it seemed wherever he was, things happened and whenever he opened his mouth, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

That day was pretty near the most exciting day of my life. I was dragged into an adventure beyond my control and one which I could never have walked away from. I saved his life that day… the first of many.

I thought of John and how I hadn’t wanted to meet this man, this alien who would change my life forever. I even sent him away when he invited me to travel with him.

It was only when he came back and uttered the magic words, “by the way did I mention? It also travels in time?” that I knew this was my destiny and this wonderful man was my path to my past and to my future.


	11. Get Me To The Church On Time

_Saturday 7th November 1987 (Rose is 7 months old and 18/19 years old)_

 

I’m sitting here, trapped in a church waiting to die. I am surrounded by people who know me so well and people I hardly do. My dead dad is figuring out who I am and my mother is about the same age as me. And there I am, a baby me, kicking in my basket without a care in the world while the monsters outside are eating away at the bricks.

My Doctor sits away from me, too angry with me to ask for my help. My dad is pensive, my mother angrier than the Doctor if that is possible.

The life I’ve been living is flashing before me as I repeatedly regret asking him to bring me here.

Oh, the times we’ve had. The places he’s taken me. We seemed to have found trouble as we’ve travelled or, at least, we’ve attracted it.

He took me to the end of the world, showing off, I suppose; and it all went terribly wrong and, as I was soon to find out, it mostly did.

The world burned before us and we hardly noticed as we tried to save ourselves. I was trapped; the Doctor had gone off with this woman who I believed was a descendant of a tree.

As the heat intensified and the space station we were upon began to crack, I thought of John, my rescuer, my secret time traveller, my future… where was he now, I wondered as certain death faced me.

Then, as if my thoughts were heard, my Doctor was outside the door and giving me attitude even though I knew we were both scared.

There is something about facing death that brings you closer and we were to experience much of this together, but this time was different. I was millions of years away and thousands of miles away and all I had… was him. It made me feel a little of what he was feeling. 

After it was all over, he took me back home, showed me that life was far from over yet and explained that he had no one; they were all dead, only he survived. My heart cracked a little then. He had me and I told him so.

He wanted to impress me so much and it always seemed that we ended up in trouble. Not that that was so bad. I loved it, it was so... exciting!

Take Cardiff... he wanted me to experience a European Christmas and I did, but not at all how he had planned it.

There we were, in a basement surrounded by scary zombies and without a chance of survival and all he could do was tell me how glad he was that we met. And I could only agree. Despite the fear and the losses that were inevitable along the way, I was having the time of my life and, to my deepest confusion; I knew there was no one else in the universe I would rather be having it with.

Imagine, we were saved by Charles Dickens that night! Well, him and a very brave and unfortunate maid who I will always feel indebted to.

After all that, he decided I better go home and visit. Said that sometimes one needed to ground oneself otherwise one might lose touch with reality. To tell you the truth, I just wanted to go home and get a few more of my things.

My mother was furious… he thought he was bringing me back the next day and we turned up a year later.

Up on the roof, where I had had so many heart to hearts with John we chatted. I know it wasn’t funny that my mum had slapped him, but it bought out some honest thinking. There was definitely something between us, I just couldn’t quite pin it down. Was my excitement when I was with him more of a sexual one than one of an adrenalin based one? 

All over the place, people assumed we were a couple… at the end of the world and even the police officer had asked us directly.

“Nine hundred years, that’s one hell of an age gap!”

I was guilty for what I had put Mickey through, but he really was being a wet blanket, I had come back, the problem was rectified. I knew there was nothing left between us, but I sort of liked the way my Doctor reacted to him. He positively bristled about him as if he was jealous and that stirred feelings within me.

I found this disturbing, I knew there was a man in my future, a wonderful man who would be something to me one day and yet, I still went after Jimmy and Mickey and now I was developing feelings for the Doctor? What was wrong with me? Was this all some kind of weird Electra complex?

And then of course we were pulled into another spine chilling, mind boggling adventure of the alien variety. 

I went to Number Ten, met a nine-foot-tall green alien and nearly got eaten and finished off with aiding and abetting the blowing up of the houses of Parliament.

Oh, there was more to it than that and I’m not going to tell it now because it’s a widely known story. What I will tell you is that I was so happy that my Doctor admitted he would rather lose the world than lose me.

At this point I knew that whatever the future held for me, I wasn’t going to give up on the now, I wanted to be with my Doctor wherever the path was taking us. And John had told me this much, hadn’t he?

Every adventure we took, I wanted him to admit that something was up between us and everyone else seemed to tell him. Even a battle scarred Dalek. 

I knew he had no choice, trapping me with the deadliest creature in the universe, but it still came as a shock. Lucky for me, the creature within was at death’s door and no longer wanted to continue its trail of death and destruction.

I’ve never seen a man more angry than when he caught up with us and once again, by standing between him and his arch enemy, I was facing death. But he broke and I knew then that the creature behind me wasn’t the only battle scarred alien in the vicinity.

I was frightened by the depth of feelings that were pulled out of us. By the dance we were dancing. Maybe that is why I invited Adam along, just to try and lighten up the mood. I don’t know. It was certainly a big mistake and it didn’t take me long to realise it.

I sometimes see too much humour in our near death experiences. I still get a thrill out of that little door opening and shutting in Adam’s forehead and hearing the words, “I only take the best and I’ve got Rose.” Indeed he did have and how do I repay him?

I take advantage of him and ask him to bring me back to the day my father died and make a complete mess of everything, that’s how!

My dad has realised, and everything’s horrible. I just wanted to meet him, just wanted to know him if only for a short while.

I am helpless and try as he is, I know what he believes should happen. But how can I ask that of him? 

Then, before I can do anything about it I am handed my baby-self and my Doctor is eaten up by the monsters of time and there is nothing, nothing I can do.

I can’t believe what I’m hearing my dad say when he’s worked it out. And even though I put up a fight, I know it’s the only solution.

The choices we make in life define who we are and what the world is to us.

My dad walks out into the street and rights my mistake, and my heart breaks for my selfish need.

“Go to him…” The words ring in my ears, and I get to say goodbye before my Doctor leads me, broken, back to the TARDIS.

I thought that might have been the end of my travels with my Doctor. I have never been more wrong. In a way, they had only just begun.


	12. There's A First Time For Everything

_London some time during 1941 (Rose is 19)_

Hanging from a rope below a blimp while the city is being bombed is not the way I had envisaged dying… the pain that I was enduring from the rope burns was overshadowing my fear and I cursed the Doctor again for just shooting off without me.

Maybe he was a little miffed at me, I had told him that he was a bit wanting in the technical department and he does love his ship so, and his sonic, come to that.

Is it me, or do other people meet time travellers throughout their lives? I mean maybe we’re all wandering around keeping these huge secrets for fear of paradoxes?

Captain Jack Harkness… not that that was his real name... oh no… he pinched it off someone else, but it suits him well. He saved my life… with gadgets… can you imagine? My Doctor never looked so put out when he discovered what had happened, when he saw Jack with his perfect good looks and his Sonic Blaster!

He was a player, knew his stuff and all the tension that had been building between us (me and the Doctor) was getting to me. Jack turning up at this point seemed like much more than coincidence. And if he was ruffled by Mickey, he was positively squirming at Jack’s cheesy one liners. I cannot deny that the attention was very flattering and there’s certainly something about Jack… even a nun (or a monk) couldn’t resist him.

I’ll never forget that conversation stuck in an old office that was being used for storage and him completely floored by Jack. I mean, he couldn’t ask me outright, but he was so worried that I wanted Jack. We talked about dancing, but we weren’t talking about dancing at all. It was odd; strangely arousing and him all fluffed up and embarrassed pretending disinterest.

Of course, the Doctor always comes out on top (this time not a euphemism) and he saved the day acting like… well, like a god, I suppose.

How we danced that night on board the TARDIS. Jack not getting a look in as the Doctor showed me his moves. I think he was warning Jack off because he didn’t make a pass at me again after that. But it didn’t matter, the reaction in my Doctor showed me that the signals I had been getting weren’t wrong. I needed to see Mickey… tell him. It was only fair, right?

_Saturday 4th June 2005 (Rose is 19)_

The opportunity arose when we had to make a pit stop in Cardiff. Even the TARDIS needs fuel apparently! We had been all over the place, the three of us and had the most incredible adventures, Jack had proved himself both useful and a liability. We had come to the conclusion that his motives were mostly ruled by his libido and the running we had had to do because of it!

The Doctor wasn’t at all pleased about my calling Mickey, my pretext of wanting my passport completely lost upon him. Mickey was moody and I felt guilty. The Doctor was sulking and I wanted to worry him. It was childish, I know, but I’m flesh and blood, he may be able hold back, keep his reserve, but I was tired of pretending.

My thoughts often strayed to John, my handsome time travelling stranger and guilt and confusion wracked me. I would lay awake at night wondering how my future couldn’t include the Doctor. I would have to tell John he had got it wrong, that I couldn’t be something to him when I was in… when I wanted to spend the rest of my days with my Doctor.

Maybe things were never going to change between us, was I happy to stay like this? A platonic (well, almost) relationship? Perhaps in the future I get fed up and find John?

But now, here in Cardiff all I wanted was to kiss him, my Doctor and for those wonderful hands to do things to me that up till now I had only ever fantasised about.

Walking off with Mickey, knowing that he would be watching me was wrong; I knew it then as I know it now. It certainly wasn’t fair to use Mickey like that, but I was young and desperate. Literally. 

Of course things started to go wrong and I left Mickey, just left him, to run for my Doctor. I had complained about the Doctor’s rickety way of life… hadn’t realised how marvellous his ship was, not until I saw what happened to Blon. Little did I know that witnessing that would be sealing somebody’s’ death sentence.

“So, you and Mickey?” He asked me as we set off for Raxacoricofallapatorious. Jack was in the engine rooms, the Doctor sent him off to check on something that had a completely unspellable (is that even a word?) name. In retrospect, I think it might have been a wild goose chase.

“All done… he’s seeing someone else…”

“What was all that about then?”

“Whaddyamean?” 

“Flirting with him as if you were Jack and sneaking off with him? Passport… who needs passports when you have psychic paper?” he snorted.

“Just… cos…”

“Rose?”

“You some kind of saint?”

“Been confused for one often enough…”

“Yeah, well you go on about dancing an’ that, won’t let Jack anywhere near me… all that hugging and hand holding, Doctor?” I knew I was crossing some kind of line, but I was worked up.

“What do you want from me, Rose?”

I couldn’t play this game anymore and my temper and frustration were building, I knew that if I didn’t run then I was going to say things that I might regret. I think I growled as I left him standing, and to this day I’m certain he chuckled after me.

It certainly didn’t take him long to catch me up, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a stop, turning me towards him with a grin on his face that infuriated me all the more.

“What is it you want from me, Doctor?” I spat back at him. His face dropped, steely seriousness instantly transforming it. He pulled me into his arms, pretty near kissed the life out of me and only stopped as my knees began to give way.

“Oh, Rose… I shouldn’t…” he breathed into my hair.

“I think you just did…” I whispered, my face smiling up at him, my arms twining around his neck. He rested his forehead on mine and I placed another, more chaste, kiss upon his troubled mouth.

“I’ve been holding myself back, it’s been so hard… what with all the testosterone you keep inviting in and all those… clothes… you keep wearing around the place… I think you do it on purpose…”

“Woolly tights, cut off denim skirt and a long knitted scarf? Yeah, I’m a real temptress!”

“Exactly… and don’t dismiss long knitted scarves, had some of my best times in a long knitted scarf!”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me!” He bent down and kissed me again, this time much more slowly and deliberately. 

“What am I to do about you…?”

“I can think of a few things…”

It wasn’t immediate, took us some time, but by the time we got to Raxacoricofallapatorious, we were definitely a couple.

After we left, we were sharing the same bed.


	13. Always Crashing In The Same car

_Some time during 200,100 ish (Rose is 19/20)_

 

The day started off so well, we were having such a good time and then… then I was pulled into something so terrifying… pulled into what turned out to be one of the most awful days of my life. And I’ve been through a few, you know, there was Jimmy and then seeing my Dad die. This day could possibly be worse than the latter, certainly they are on a par.

The games station was a game of death, or so it seemed. Only had I known whose death it was going to be, I would have demanded we leave at the first possible moment if I had. But I didn’t, too wrapped up in trying to find the solution to even contemplate leaving that tomb.

We were all thrown into this sick game that ironically reflected games shows from twenty first century television. I ended up on the Weakest Link and it was only when someone was disintegrated before my eyes that I realised the sick horrific thing that was happening to me. I stood and watched as each contestant was killed and then it was my turn. But the Doctor taught me not to go down without a fight and so I ran just as he and Jack burst into the studio. But the robot in charge of this game was programmed to destroy and as I was shot I caught sight of my Doctor’s horrified face. He thought I was dead.

But I wasn’t, I had ended up on a space ship surrounded by Daleks, loads and loads of them. I didn’t think I would survive this. Not after what the Doctor had told me, not the way they sounded. So set on domination and destruction were they.

But there he was, screaming at them, hanging on the edge of a rage that I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of and I could see and feel them recoiling in something that resembled fear even though he had told me that they felt no emotion.

His voice as he addressed me, it filled me with hope and security. He was coming to get me. 

And then the TARDIS, the beautiful, wonderful, clever TARDIS materialised around me and I was safe with Jack and my Doctor again! Of course not quite safe, there happened to be a DALEK right behind me, and this time I wasn’t about to stand between it and the huge gun Jack was wielding. The Doctor shouted for me to get down and after the bang we fell into each others arms.

Of course we weren’t out of the woods yet. There was a whole horde of Daleks braying for blood outside and we had no choice, we were going to face them. Though why we didn’t leave then is a mystery and a cause of regret that I have often thought of.

After a heated exchange of words where we found out the huge intent of those insane creatures, we went back to the games station, running from the imminent invasion to help the universe and repair the damage that we had done by leaving platform five without clearing up the mess we left behind one hundred years previously.

He had befriended another girl while he thought I was dead, Lynda; and I still feel a little spasm of guilt when I relive the jealous pang I experienced when I saw her. Even when he sent me away, part of me questioned why not her. She died along with many others that day.

He sent me away to save my life, tricked me into the TARDIS and sent us home. Only he forgot, home was with him and I wasn’t about to let that happen, not without trying. I couldn’t sit about knowing that he was going to die.

Me and Mickey, we tried everything to get the TARDIS to take me back. I was desperate, in love, and I know that if it was the other way around he wouldn’t abandon me, would he?

It was Mum that bought the solution, ironic that she did this even though she knew that in helping she was approving of my life style, something that she had been dead set against since I first took up with my Doctor.

Memories are a little vague after we broke into the heart of the TARDIS, I’m not sure what happened, I just believed that after Blon, the answers lay there.

There was a great deal of light and someone was singing. I was aware of Daleks all about me, one very large one in particular. My Doctor was there, but he seemed almost scared of me. It’s all a bit of a blur, really. I mean deep down I know exactly what happened, and I get vivid flash memories of it even now. I remember death and sorrow, my head splitting in two and a sweet, sweet kiss.

The next thing I was coming to on the console room floor and my Doctor was at the console same as always. But something wasn’t quite right.

His words still fill me with sorrow to this day. I miss him; I will always miss him even though I understand.

He had saved me; somehow he had saved me from burning and in doing that he had sacrificed himself. The world was safe, the Daleks gone and my Doctor was dying.

But not quite.

So hard to take in words that you don’t really understand but know that they are words of goodbye. He was accepting it and I could not grasp it. The love of my life was leaving me and smiling about it… almost.

“I was going to take you to so many places…”

“Then… why can’t we go?”

“I absorbed the energy of the time vortex No one’s supposed to do that… every cell in my body is dying…”

“Isn’t there something you can do?”

“Yeah. Doing it now… and you’re not going to see me again… not with this daft old face. And before I go…”

“Don’t say that!”

“Rose… before I go, I just wanted to tell you: you were fantastic…” Oh, there was so much more said in those last few moments, but in those last words I got the impression he wanted to say so much more than he actually could.

Then the light that poured out of him, so blinding, keeping me back with the heat however much I needed and wanted to hold him, to be with him during this. I could not get closer and so I watched as he changed before my very eyes.

The weirdest most disturbing thing I think I might have ever seen and I’ve seen plenty in my travels, you know it.

There, standing in My Doctor’s clothes, in the exact same spot, looking younger than I had ever seen him was my time travelling future. John smiled at me and I knew immediately that he had no clue that I knew his face.


	14. Secret

_Christmas Day 2005 (Rose is 19/20)_

The heartbreak was unreal. I had been infatuated with a stranger all my life and then Jimmy had sort of taken control of me when I was easily led. Mickey had been my safety net. But I never truly loved someone, never gave myself totally to someone. Not until My Doctor.

To lose him without warning like that, to somehow feel responsible and to be faced with the same face that he had prophesised I would end up with, well, it was unbearable.

I had no idea what to say. I had learnt the hard way about paradoxes and time overlapping and the terrible damage it can cause. I remember John telling me that I would meet him and that I must not tell him. But he had kept something huge from me. They both had. 

My terrible loss was overlapped with anger and fear and misunderstanding.

He didn’t know and was interpreting the look upon my face as not believing in him.

I wanted My Doctor back and here was John acting weird and not actually being My John at all!

My head still drummed from all I had been through and my inability to hardly speak seemed to get to him and suddenly, we were headed back to London for Christmas.

Oh, he was trying, trying so very hard; tempting me into a smile because he really was unbearably lovely. What My Doctor would have described as a ‘pretty-boy'. And then more panic and confusion as something seemed to be going drastically wrong with the procedure which I will know as regeneration when all is properly explained.

I felt so detached; I think it must have been shock. I was so upset that all this had been kept from me, like three men who were all actually the same man, were playing a terrifying and complicated game with me.

And there was nothing I could say to him because he had told me not to! How cruel was that? I was forced into keeping my own secret and I didn’t know if I would be able to. Not with all the feelings building up inside like some huge emotional volcano.

Mum was brilliant, accepting it all without blinking an eyelid. The experiences that I had forced her into were making her immune to it all and I pondered briefly on that. I wondered if that was really a good thing. Danger needs to be in check sometimes, right?

He was in some kind of coma for the best part of that day, the world was in danger again and he could do nothing to help. 

I was angry and frightened and so alone with this and stark contrast, my Mum was the gentle caring nurse to this man who I knew but that I really didn’t know at all.

“The Doctor wouldn’t do this. The old Doctor. The Proper Doctor. He’d wake up. He’d save us.” I felt like I had been abandoned not only by the man that I loved but by the man that was my future. Why did that particular detail have to be a secret?

And later, the guilt hit, the fear of losing whatever was our future, seeing him at death’s door with just one weak heart beating inside his thin chest. I could hold onto the tears no longer.

“He’s gone. The Doctor’s gone. He’s left me, Mum… He’s left me, Mum…”

I remember so much about My first Doctor. The Doctor says you never forget your first Doctor, but I find that in poor taste.

Sometimes, when I’m alone and in that frame of mind I think about our times together. Yes, the adventures, the thrills, but our intimate times when all had been done and won. I don’t necessarily mean the sex, although, that has to be said, is something I have missed along the way.

I remember the smooth skin at the back of his neck where there was no hair and how he loved me to stroke it as we lay together.

I remember the taste of him, the aura of him. Everyone has their own flavour and he was no exception. I miss that and so I should.

But most of all, I miss those deep penetrating blue eyes. I could and often did, lose myself in them. He could strip me bare physically and emotionally with those eyes. He said everything with them.

And just when I thought that was it, the end of everything, he’s there. Oh, not My first Doctor, not exactly John, but such a… man!

He put on quite a show and had me in such a dilemma. It was exciting and breathtaking and shocking. It isn't every day you see a person grow themselves a new hand after the first is severed in a sword fight, is it?

"Oh, so I'm still the Doctor, then?"

"There's no argument from me!"

When all was done and dusted and even after Harriet Jones turned coward, I still felt a certain inability to accept it all. A loyalty to My first Doctor, I suppose.

Later that night, in the flat as we were setting out Christmas dinner I wondered if he was coming back. He had gone back to the TARDIS for something, but he had taken such a long time with it that part of me half thought he might have just left. But as soon as I thought it, I knew it to be wrong. 

This man, this new Doctor… one day he goes back to help a little girl through her hard and lonely life. No one walks away from that, right?

He walked through the door and there I see him. The same clothes, same long coat. This Doctor is John and therefore all this was meant to happen and however much I miss My first Doctor, I could not stop time doing what time does.

Later, outside in the not snow, as he ranted about the wonders of the universe even though we both knew how horrific the ash was, I was drawn in as they all knew I would be.

Mickey finally moved from being my boyfriend to friend and I love him for it. Our paths will cross often and I wouldn’t want to lose him altogether.

My mum and this Doctor seemed to hit it off a little better. They still bantered, but there was so much more affection there. Maybe her worst mistake with him was practically making a pass at him when he was a complete stranger?

And as we watched that ash filled sky and looked out to the stars we were going to visit, a great rush of hope surged through me.

This was what My Doctor wanted, what he expected of me and I was in too deep to back out.

Secrets aren’t always a good thing, but they aren’t always a bad thing either. 

I always understood that his secret was to protect the fragment of time. 

I understood that his secret was merely not mentioned because he hadn’t had the opportunity to explain it.

But my secret, the same secret as the first, I suppose. I think that a harsh one to lay upon me. It means that at some point he will be without me and he will do what he does because he was driven by his own loneliness and his desire to see me made him persuade himself that I needed him when he came.

Of course, I did need him on occasion, but I suppose, as I've said before, somewhere along the way before he planted those memories, I dealt with the problems that life threw me and still lived to tell the tale.


	15. Experiencing Technical Difficulties

_Saturday May 20th 2006 (Rose is 19/20)_

We’re stuck on another dimension, the TARDIS is mending herself and I, in the mean time have discovered that my father is very much alive here and I just couldn’t listen to the Doctor, could I? 

Things pretty much went back to how they were before he changed, almost immediately. I mean our first kiss with his new body (new new he would say!) it wasn’t exactly me, but I have a vague memory of it and I knew that I wanted more and that it was very much on the cards that everything was headed that way.

I think he was trying to impress me, no, I know he was, Taking me off to another Earth way, way into the future so I could sit and smell the apple grass. Course, with us it never works out that simple, does it and we’re suddenly embroiled in another life threatening adventure and of course the Doctor saved the day… again!

Cassandra told him I fancied him! Honestly, it was so bizarre and even with all the dangers, there was an element of playground antics within it!

Then he tried to take me to see a concert and things didn’t go according to plan… again. Werewolves exist along with everything else and what we encountered was no Quileute, I can tell you!

It’s weird how we run into this stuff over and over even when we aren’t looking for it! 

Maybe he was trying too hard, I don’t know, I mean I accepted what he was, we had had history and his flirting was almost uncontrollable. But still, we both were holding back. Maybe he was scared he wouldn’t match up. My first Doctor had certainly been a fantastic lover, but to my mind, if you talked the talk, you should walk the walk. At least, in this case anyway!

I think I contacted Mickey because I wanted to jolt him into a reaction, not exactly make him jealous like I had in Cardiff, no, just make him realise. But I think he was more angry than he was letting on, putting Mickey down at every turn. I wanted to tell him, but then an old friend of his turned up and I started to doubt everything we were.

“I don’t age. I regenerate. But humans decay; you wither and die. Imagine watching this happen to someone you l…”

“What, Doctor?”

“You can spend the rest of your life with me… but I can’t with you! I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.”

Then I really didn’t get, after all that, why he invited Mickey along. The old him wouldn’t have… would he?

But invite him he did and then our very first trip with him in tow, My Doctor embarrasses me by participating in a full on flirtation with some French historical bint that smelt weird and frankly was rather boss eyed!

Was he turning tables and trying to make me jealous? Because it worked.

I really thought I’d lost him, thought he had decided to stay with her, but he came back… eventually.

Those first few journeys, we were on such a roller coaster as we dipped up and down, looped the loop, both of us knowing that eventually we were going to have to get off the ride and face the truth.

I took the initiative, wanting to console him, fearful that he had developed feelings for the French concubine. In retrospect, I think he felt for every living soul, good or bad and he was upset about her more because he left her dangling, expecting him to arrive on a white steed and whisk her away.

I went to him and an emotional and loud argument broke out, I think the sexual tension had reached fever pitch and we ended up consummating our new new relationship without a second thought for poor Mickey.

After that, it got harder not to talk about John. Sometimes, I let slip and he would look at me oddly, but I had a get out clause going by the name of Bad Wolf. The Bad Wolf had seen everything right through time apparently, so I could easily put it down to my addled mind unable to contain the memories in quite the right order.

It’s weird how that goes, because I knew I was going to end up with him from a very early age... before anything to do with any mysterious being I became when converged with the time continuum vortex.

Anyway, so we’re here, stuck on another dimension, a parallel world. Virtually identical to our own. And yet it is so completely alien to me. My dad is… well, he is just like the man I met in that church all those years ago, but my mum… I mean, what happened to her to make her so… bitter? Was it the money, my dad was successful here it turns out. Was it not having children, specifically another Rose? She was just so angry in a completely different direction than the fishwife she could be back home.

Mickey went off pretty quickly, the noise of our loud lovemaking still ringing in his ears, I would imagine. And the Doctor begged me not to go after my curiosity, but I did, of course and he followed because I knew he would.

My mum and dad’s house! See, I could only think that the advantage of not having me gave my mum a better life. Then I met her and quickly came to the conclusion that the person she is without me and with all that wealth; isn’t someone I would actually like.

We posed as waiting staff for her birthday party and it turned out that many respected and high up people were going to be there. Clearly not a party like _my_ mum throws, but a business bash for clients, not friends. 

Something was afoot and we both knew it, something that didn’t ring true.

I thought the Daleks scary enough purely from their lack of emotion, their ability to just destroy for the sake of it. But Cybermen, they were once us… and truthfully, those great silver men will always send a chill down my spine, because of just that.

And so it went, the drama, the near death experiences, all of it wrapped up in a bubble that seemed to revolve around my family that wasn’t my family.

In the nick of time, Mickey turns up to save our bacon, only it isn’t Mickey at all, it’s this universes version of him and his name is Rickey. Weird that because my first Doctor was always calling him that. It made me wonder if he had been here before.

Later he was killed by the hands of a Cyberman. His friend Jake was devastated and I saw a new side to my Doctor. Was he so used to death that he was almost oblivious to it? You don’t tell a person who has just lost their partner that there will be time for mourning later however dire the circumstances are. It scared me a little, his ease of acceptance and show of almost heartlessness. However, I said nothing then because the circumstances were indeed very dire.

Then the mother who had never had me was taken and killed, to become one of them, her anger stripped from her forever.

My not-dad clearly wanted nothing to do with me and this hurt just as much as knowing that his wife had died.

****************

And now its time to go, my not-dad won’t even look inside the TARDIS and Mickey…

He’s going to stay, nothing back there for him and he can start afresh without changing who he is… near enough.

As my Doctor holds me, the burning guilt consumes me and I weep. He thinks Mickey still means something to me and I am too emotionally wrought to put him right. Of course he does, but not in that way.

The TARDIS materialises right inside the flat’s sitting room and I fall into my mum’s arms, so glad to see she is still her and still very much alive.

She asks about Mickey and I can tell by my Doctor’s voice that he is also too emotionally spent to explain tonight.

Things will be explained in the morning to all, although I doubt I will feel better about it for a very long time.


	16. Nature Morte

_Date Unspecified. somewhere in the vortex. (Rose is 21)_

When we were just us together in the TARDIS, when we were bobbing around in the vortex taking a breather from the extravagant adventures we happened upon… those times, they were so very precious.

Much of it was spent in bed, I have to say, and although he moaned about how much sleep I needed I also knew how much pleasure he took in just lying there watching me rest.

Rarely did he disturb me, only if we had got somewhere and I was ‘oversleeping’ or if he suddenly found it ‘necessary’ to make love. Not that I complained… about the latter at any rate!

We talked and talked in our cosy nest about all we could. He revealed so much of himself to me and I found it increasingly hard to talk about myself. He takes in facts to the finest detail and stores them away ready to use another day, so every detail had to be accurate and completely without him.

“Tell me what you were like as a kid... says four or five… I’ll bet you got into lots of scrapes?” My heart would sink and I would do my best, but sometimes he looked so sad, as if he knew. But how could he?

“Tell me about your trip to Europe? Tell me about all your birthdays… tell me how I knew about the red bike?”

“Pardon?” This was such an unusual comment mixed in with all the usual questions that I physically jumped.

“Rose…” He sat up and leaned over to his pinstriped jacket slumped in a messy heap on the floor. “I wasn’t prying, you understand? It fell from your pocket… I wouldn’t have normally read anything that I wasn’t invited to… well, maybe I would… but in this instance I recognised the handwriting… specifically because, well, it was actually my own…” He smoothed the crumpled worn paper out and handed it to me.

I had carried that list around with me for so long, transferring it from pocket to pocket, it had always been there… I never thought that one day this might happen. In retrospect, I suppose it was meant to happen this way.

“I…I… no… I can’t, you told me… I mustn’t…”

“Is this what I think it is?” I didn’t answer him, just stared at him wondering how he was going to react. “I went back? But I don’t see… why would I?”

“You never said why, but you seemed to turn up in times of extreme need… I think I’ve been jeopardy friendly my whole life…”

“But Rose, you got through them without me in one piece…”

“I know... I worked that much out…”

“What made me decide to do that and how have you kept this a secret all this time?”

“It hasn’t been easy… but you said it would damage the fragment of time if I told you… besides, when I met you, when I was a kid, you didn’t tell me who you were, just that I should call you John… I didn’t realise it was you until… until you became you…”

“Damage the fragment of time… I would use that one… no, Rose I must have found pockets of time where I could visit… you know I wouldn’t risk a paradox, would I?”

“No… you wouldn’t…” And this actually hurt. He pointed out something that I had missed. Of course each visit would have been carefully planned and this somehow made me feel secondary. Tears began all too easily, a great bottled up well of memories shared but never really shared at all. He gathered me into his arms and we lay there together in what I saw and probably still do to this day; as the safest place in the whole world.

He kissed away my tears and we lay there for hours as he gently coaxed me through our memories. He was insistent that I was very careful with my words and didn’t add anything and as I spoke the floodgates opened and I shared all I could with him.

But there were some things that I found I could not discuss. Because I knew, and so he must have too, that at some point he makes the decision to do this, to go back and I certainly don’t want to speculate anymore on why because it probably means something heartbreaking. Every time I think of it, it feels dark, ominous, like there’s something in the air… a storm coming…

As I talk on and on, he sits up, reaches into the bedside drawer and pulls out a piece of fresh blue paper. He writes down dates as I recall them, sometimes looking at my old worn out crumpled list.

By the time I get to where we meet in that basement he has finished the list and he’s smiling. Maybe there is a shadow within the smile, but he is happy that we have finally been as honest as we could with one another.

I have given all of me to him. Except… that time when he appeared ill on New Year’s Eve, something stopped me, I don’t know why. Maybe there was some premonition within it. I certainly remember how I felt after he had gone. Desolate… alone… bereft…

I compared the lists with one another, the old, faded, used one that I had carried with me for all those years and the brand new one. Apart from the obvious wear and tear, they were identical. Not a copy, my list was the same list but from the past and his was one to hand to me in the future.

We didn’t discuss this, not then; we just took our respective lists and tucked them away into our respective pockets after we were dressed.

From there on, we looked to the future and didn’t contemplate the whys and the wherefores out loud.

But after that morning my Doctor became more like my John then ever he had before.


	17. A Drop Of Blood In A Bowl Full Of Milk

_Forty Second Century on a planet far, far away… (Rose is 21)_

 

Travelling with the Doctor has been the most wonderful thing. I met the most fantastic man in the universe and he actually believes that I am the most fantastic woman in the universe.

I mean, I suppose, living life like we do, there is always an element of fear clouding us. We could lose our lives, well I could, then. But it is so exhilarating. Before, I just trudged through life, sometimes seeing him, not knowing exactly who he was. There was always the thrill of the promise of the future within it. But my life started properly when I was nineteen years old.

And I never looked back and I could never try and change it because all along this was meant to be.

He took me back to the nineteen fifties, to the coronation, that hadn’t been his intent, but I was used to that by now. It usually followed that if we landed somewhere we hadn’t planned; then help was needed.

I lost my face, he lost his temper. I don’t think I realised quite the depth of feeling he was carrying about for me until I saw his pain as he called to me trapped inside an old telly. 

But when he saved me and everyone else who had been nearly fed upon by an errant alien, and we found each other… oh, it was the best feeling… being wrapped in his arms inhaling his musky scent. I knew then that he had done something magnificent to save the world, to save history. He always did.

Then we found ourselves out in deep space on a Sanctuary Base. The base was orbiting a black hole which the Doctor said was an impossible thing in itself. Naturally, we had to stick around. Naturally something was wrong, very wrong.

We lost the TARDIS and believed ourselves stranded in time and space. 

Although, in the past there had been hints that our relationship becomes stronger, that I was destined to become his wife one day, he didn’t know that, I hadn’t told him, so it was on tentative legs that our first plans of proper domestic began.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, surely he knew that? This was forever, warts and all. It didn’t matter where we were; or what we did, we were us and that was it for me, everything else, TARDIS and travelling through time and space, they were just extras.

We got separated; he went down in this lift into a pit thousands of feet below the surface where they had been digging and discovered some ancient ruins that he believed held the answers to our problems. I didn’t want him to go, but I knew I couldn’t stop him.

We all nearly died that day at the hand of something inexplicable and evil and even when I really thought him dead I still found the strength in me to stand up and say no, to fight for our lives. He had taught me that much.

When I heard his voice inside that battered shuttle, I don’t think I had ever felt happier, nor been more pleased to see him as I was then. Well... up until then, let’s say.

I was told something that day that scared me. The Doctor told me that that is what the evil did, fed you your fears until you breathed it. The trick was to not believe. I wanted to believe him, but there was something in his eyes that couldn’t quite let me. In truth I was so happy to have him back that I pushed the fears into the back of my head and carried on regardless.

When we went back to London and in between hunting a Hoix (nasty), we discovered that some bloke had been harassing my mum to get information about us. She was really upset. My mum has never made particularly good choices when it comes to the opposite sex and the Doctor could see that I felt some responsibility for this particular time and so he went after this Elton bloke so I could give him a dressing down. 

Only trouble was, he was in trouble himself and we had no choice really, we had to help him.

I've witnessed the romantic in my Doctor many times, but there is something to be said about someone who is prepared to give two people in love their happily ever after no matter how odd the circumstances are.

There were many visits, many adventures and shopping trips gone wrong, many wonderful dates where everything went according to plan and sometimes surpassed them. With each encounter, each fantastic journey, we just got closer and closer until we were near enough a single unit, bonded together throughout time and space.

When we went to have a cheating look at the 2012 Olympics, I really didn’t expect to run into trouble. It was an innocent sojourn into just a few years ahead of my time. 

Every time we were separated, it always felt like I was never going to see him again. And I never just waited, I always tried to get back to him, and I always would. He was everything to me and I hoped I was as much to him.

It was just too simple, a possession of a little girl, people trapped in her drawings and yet, potentially an end to the whole world. 

I think I might have lost my own storm a little that day. I know I fought to get him back and somehow he managed to show me the way, even as a two dimensional animation.

The happiness I felt at holding his hand once again was shadowed by the worry that he voiced cryptically aloud for once. He made me feel as if things were coming to an end.

The next morning he was contrite, knowing that our life didn’t allow for those worries. He took me across time and space to a beautiful planet full of the kindest people and aliens; it was if he knew we would find no trouble there. We were formally blessed, bonded together forever, on a hillside beside a huge tree, its silver leaves jingling in the breeze. 

He didn’t believe in any god and would never have contemplated the pomp and circumstance of a traditional earth wedding but that was perfect for us. A handful of lovely souls to witness and to celebrate. And us... just us.

Finally, I was the Time Lord’s wife.

I didn’t think about Mum until this day, three weeks into the honeymoon, we were shopping in a bizarre on a funny little planet near the Boeshane Peninsula in the forty second century. The marketeers were haggling for our business; we must have caused a stir amongst the funny little people around us.

We were so happy we didn’t even mind the attention at that point. Sometimes when you’re too happy, something can cloud you without warning and my Mum’s face came into my head quite suddenly.

“We don’t have to tell her…” he put in hopefully and I laughed out loud. He was always going to try and duck out of it, it was in his biology, I think. 

So, it was possibly the happiest couple in the universe who stepped out of the TARDIS that fateful day and crossed the Powell Estate to tell my mother that the Doctor was actually her new son-in-law with a peace offering of an alien weather predictor from the forty second century to soften the blow.

Had I known then what I know now, I probably would have turned us around and ran. 

And I would never have looked back.


	18. Dissolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What can I say? Tissue warning...

_21st October 2007 — alternate universe time (Rose is 21/22/23?)_

I write this sat on a window seat looking out onto the Manor’s spectacular gardens. It’s October and all is in perfect shades of orange and amber and the sun is shining. But I feel nothing for it. I can hear my Mum laughing downstairs and it makes my heart ache. 

I wanted to stay with him. There is little here for me, Pete is all she needs for now and I think Mickey believes we have a chance without the Doctor around.

They all think I’m so strong, that I’ll get through this, but no one knows how much I am breaking apart inside, about the secret I am hiding. They don’t know that I’m waiting… waiting for my husband to come and get me.

That day, that Saturday, when we went back to London to tell my Mum our news, we were so happy. But Mum was behaving extremely oddly and trouble was afoot. She believed that shadows visiting were ghosts, but we knew different.

Of course we had to go after the trouble and before we knew it, we were dragged away and into the danger.

I find the memories of that day too painful to go into great detail, but in short, a rift had opened between the parallels and the Cybermen were getting through it along with something else... Daleks.

Mickey came to find us, to get help from the only man they knew could help. Danger was all about, the conclusion the Doctor came up with was to send all of them back into the void. A place between universes… a nothing... a kind of hell.

Any being that has travelled through time and space would be sucked in to it once it was opened, like magnets. The trouble was, this included me.

He tried to send me away with my Mum to the other universe, but I went back. I belonged with him. He was trying to keep me safe, but he may as well let me die than trap me away from him.

He was angry, but it was like I had passed some kind of test, my choice had been finally made.

In order that we open the void, we had to pull back these levers, two of them. I often wonder how he would have managed without me had I not returned, but I know he would have somehow, possibly getting himself sucked into the void in the process.

He told me to hold on, not to let go and avoid being sucked into hell and I really did. It was scary watching all those Cybermen and Daleks flying past us, our bodies pulled towards the rippling void and our arms firmly entwined in those clamps he had fitted to the walls.

He hadn’t accounted for a Dalek hitting the lever nearest me and sending it back into closure.

I was the only one who could push it back, the only one who could stop the madness.

Seconds before, we had been laughing at the feeling and now, I could see on his face as my fingers clutched that lever, hopelessness… I could feel the pull, stronger than my grip, my life with him slipping, slipping away.

Our eyes were locked and as the void pulled me off the lever, we both screamed out as if we were being ripped apart.

The Doctor’s face will never leave me as he watched on in horror. His wife hurtling towards the void and towards certain death.

And then… right at the very last… a strong arm wrapped around my waist and stopped me. I looked up into my husband’s sad eyes and then he was gone.

I was trapped here, in the alternative. Pete, my alternative father, had somehow managed to land exactly where I was and bring me back to my mum and to Mickey.

Safe and really, really not sound at all.

I smashed my fists at that wall screaming to be taken back. 

I think I sensed him then as I leant against that white wall in that darkened room weeping, a picture appeared in my head, an image of him in exactly the same place as me on the other side, leaning against the white wall, sensing me for the last time. 

And then there was nothing.

Every night, I have dreamed of him, his voice called me across time and space, across the void, across the universes.

He sent messages I cannot remember and images of places I could be.

I went back to Torchwood every day in the hope that he may have found a way through. 

Within a week, I was back chasing aliens. It seems this world has a bigger problem and I needed to feel as if I was doing something towards getting back. Every alien encounter might get me a step closer to him.

My secret unshared and my need burning, tossing and turning at night knowing that it couldn’t be the end. It wasn’t possible for it to be the end. I knew it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t have promised me that much in the past for this emptiness I had now, would he?

His voice whispered my name calling me, pinpointing where we might see one another again until I knew where I should head. 

I believed he was coming to get me as he always had before.

The beach was grim, grey and windy. A more desolate spot than I have ever seen and I’ve seen a few.

My makeshift family had come with me… believed in me, or believed in my madness. It didn’t matter which. Did they think they were coming to say good bye? Maybe, but their support made me feel stronger than I had in weeks.

He appeared before me, just an image transferred through the TARDIS, he hadn’t come for me, hadn’t been able to. He looked so sad, so thin, so alone. I wondered how long he had searched for the moment just to say goodbye.

I couldn’t tell him my secret, the one I had held in for these months, it wasn’t fair to tell him although I got so close, but I denied him the hurt and told him I loved him.

He disappeared before he could tell me for the last time. The supernova he burnt up for this moment burnt my heart up along with it and I turned to my future, the one I didn’t choose and collapsed, finally the pain ripping my body apart.

The pain is intense, the future bleak. I know the secret that grows inside me should be my hope, but it isn’t. I know because something is wrong and my silence should be broken.

Mickey comes into my room with a knock and a cup of tea and stops short.

“Rose!” I know I am crying as he runs towards me, worried where the blood is coming from, worried that I may have done something stupid to myself.

As the pain courses through me, I know that all I physically had left of my Time Lord cannot remain within me and the universes are playing their cruellest move yet.


	19. Better Living Through Chemistry?

_October/November 2007- alternate universe time (Rose is 22/23)_

Days After

I can hear voices all about me, they talk but they say nothing. They talk like I’m not really there and… I suppose… I’m not…

I can hear my mum crying from far away and the numbness protects me from the pain. I wish I could stay in this numbness forever and just lay here feeling nothing. 

The light and the dark drift in and out and I choose the dark whenever possible.

I wake in a white room, the bleep, bleep, bleep of the machine matches my heart beat, it thrums through my eardrums and vibrates through my body as if saying in steady rhythm, “you’re alive… you’re alive…”

At first, I believe myself to be alone and relish in the not having to ask, not having to explain and then I see him and I’m not sure if this is real or not.

“Hello…” His voice cracks as he looms above me, and my eyes sting because real or not, this is exactly who I needed to see. I feel the wetness of a tear drip down the side of my face and he gently wipes it away.

My mouth opens and closes and he shakes his head, brings his forehead to mine and our tears mingle, I weep silently, unable to let out any sound and he carefully takes me in his arms and holds me as we mourn the lost soul that my body was unable to carry.

“It will be alright…” he whispers, the comfort we both need beginning and I believe him even though I am unable to ask or even think how or when he is here.

I drift away from him still in his arms and when I awake next time he is gone and it is my mother beside me, holding my hand.

 

Weeks After

 

I’m sitting up in bed and staring at the white wall. I do much of that and they all think that I have blanked myself away, but I haven’t.

I am trying to grasp through the drug induced stupors they have put me in whether I imagined him coming to comfort me and though every ounce of sense I can muster is telling me that it was wishful thinking… I know he was here, just like he was when I was a child. I don’t know how, but I know he’s been here with me more than that once while I have been under sedation.

And so, I wait…

I don’t wait long and it is as if I knew he was coming all along, perhaps he whispered it in my ear when I was in and out of consciousness?

The door opens and he walks quietly in and is surprised to see me awake.

He looks older, a few grey hairs, laughter lines… at least I think they’re laughter lines and the clothes he wears are unfamiliar, but it’s him.

“You’re real?” It’s the first words I’ve spoken since the beach and my voice sounds odd.

“Yes… but… keep it down, Rose… I’m out of time again… don’t let anyone hear us, okay?” I know because I know the rules. I’m just so relieved to see him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t…” But he stops me mid-flow, comes to me, shaking his head.

“You have nothing to be sorry about… it’s not your fault… telling me wouldn’t have stopped this…”

“Why are you here? How are you here?”

“I’m here to be with you through this… to let you know it isn’t so bad in the future… to give you hope…”

“You come back?” He doesn’t answer and I don’t pursue it because I remember this game only too well.

“You’re human… your body couldn’t cope with a Time Lord baby… I didn’t, at that point, think it even possible that we could have conceived together… otherwise I would have made sure we didn’t.”

“Too clinical, Doctor… we lost a baby… a real life… I think I nearly died too…”

“Very nearly… I intervened… oh, they don’t know that… can’t let them, but I had to come back so we can have our future… besides…” He takes my hand, sits beside me, his flesh is warm and real. I haven’t imagined this.

“Yeah…” Contrary to popular belief, things don’t always need to be said. We needed to comfort each other through our loss, anyone could work that out.

“Last time I saw you, you said it was impossible to come back…”

“Obviously, I was wrong…”

“But?”

“It’s going to be a while… three years or so… I can’t really go into detail…”

“I know… but... will I see you?”

“Yes… you’re going to need my help…”

“Help…” It isn’t a question, just a repetition and he nods, his eyes fixed firmly on mine.

“You need to get back with the living, Rose… get off the sedation… they dose you far too high as it is…”

I can’t help the tears… he has dealt with the loss probably years back and wants me to move on too quickly. The wound is too raw and it’s dawning on me that I can’t have his babies… ever… and that hurts more than I ever could have predicted.

“Sorry…” I apologise again and he is quick to realise that he is pushing too hard.

“I’ll be back in a day or so… I can’t stay; your mum will be here soon… “

“Still avoiding her then?” I make my first joke and this time his eyes moisten. He smoothes back my hair and kisses my cheek.

After he’s gone I force myself to think. He’s here… he comes back and we’re together again.

Before I am disturbed from my thoughts by the arrival of my mother, I realise something.

If he comes back and is in this universe in the future and he travels with me as I now believe he will, then he has travelled back in the TARDIS to support me. And where ever that TARDIS is, so too, am I. 

The future me.

And that is like someone had just walked upon my grave.


	20. Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head

_February 2008- alternate universe time (Rose is 22/23)_

 

“Ms Tyler?”

“Look… he said he would be here, and so he will… this place is worth enough for you to wait?” I know I was being short with the estate agent, but time was ticking by and she had shown us so many properties we had turned down; that I think her patience was beginning to wear thin.

“We’ve been waiting nearly an hour… we could start without him, surely?”

“Start without me… not a good idea at all!” His voice comes from behind me and I turn, my face lighting up. He hasn’t let me down… he came when he said he would.

It was hard at first, and he visited me in the hospital erratically. The drugs they had put me on were strong and even though I refused, begged even, they were reluctant to take me off them.

In the end I got Mum to lean on Pete who, in turn, leant on the powers that be. 

Three nights later my Doctor found me in a state of Cold Turkey with no one looking after me or interested in the slightest.

I was completely out of it and the hospital went under full investigation after they lost me.

Can you imagine my mum’s shock when she discovered me safely tucked up in my bed at the Manor?

How could I explain that? Answer, I couldn’t and so I didn’t. No CCTV footage that Pete trawled through could either, so they had to leave it as one of life’s mysteries and, I suppose, I do have my fair share of those.

I wasn’t out of the woods, although definitely much better. I obsessed about my baby. How he would have turned out, how loved he would have been. 

I wept at night alone and clung to the Doctor when he came. I needed him more than my future self, or so I thought.

But gradually things began to be more bearable, certainly sharing the grief was better with two. It wasn’t the best way to start married life, but there was no choice in the matter and he was doing his best although sometimes anger would bubble inside and I would feel unjustified jealousy at my future self who I secretly named ‘the other woman’.

It was my idea to start back at work although he agreed it would be far healthier than sitting and thinking and waiting for him to turn up.

Mum went ballistic, said that I was going back to Torchwood ‘over her dead body!’ and I fought bitterly with her. It was good for us to spar and with every spat she could see how much stronger I was becoming.

And of course all of his visits were done in secret, he had been adamant that he was unable to interact with anyone in this timeline. He was always very firm about possible paradoxes and having had the terrifying experience of nearly being eaten by a Reaper, I could understand why.

Everything happens for a reason, that’s what they say? Although sometimes it’s very hard to see what possible reason this happened for.

It seemed an easier option once I was back working to look for our own place, one where he could come and go unseen.

You can imagine my shock when he asked to come along to the viewings; it meant he would have to interact with someone in this timeline.

“I really don’t get it… you’re a hypocrite!”

“Rose… I can’t explain the intricacies of how time draws lines around itself. It weaves this way and that. I only know that I can view these places with you because I already have!”

However, he was always insistent that we viewed with this one particular agent, Carol and if she didn’t turn up, neither did he.

Our viewings were bizarre, to say the least. The Doctor would walk in, look around with a sniff and move very quickly to look out of the back door.

Every time, he would stop and look at me, then shake his head. “It’s not what we’re looking for…”

Repeatedly I would try and persuade him to think again.

“Rose… the place you live in first is specific… currently… I can only remember the back garden, that may change any moment, but my memory needs to find it first!"

“I don’t know, do I?”

“What?”

“That you're seeing me.”

“Nincompoop… of course you know… it’s already happened for future you!”

Sometimes he seemed to know more about our future, or at least let on about it. Sometimes he looked older, sometimes younger. It didn’t take much to work out that he was visiting me from all over the place and I complained.

“There might be some continuity in it if you visited me in order!”

“Well, if I visited you in order, I wouldn’t visit you at all!”

That shut me up… for a while.

This place seems so lovely, fantastic stripped floors, wide open spaces. Empty and ready to move in. I don’t even bother any more. We had looked at so many places and never really looked.

I wait for him to come away from the back door, and he doesn’t. Carol stands waiting with all the disinterest of someone waiting for a bus.

He's still standing by the back door when I walk into the kitchen.

“Doctor?”

“I remember now…” He turns to me, and he's been crying. It scares me and I move to him, hold him, ask him and he won’t tell me.

“Please…”

“Rose… I can’t… it'll be alright… “

“Ms Tyler?” Carol looks a little shocked as she walks in, and the Doctor pulls himself instantly together.

“This is it,” he tells her, and she looks at him without understanding.

“We’ll take it…” I add, and her mouth opens up and down like a goldfish.

Carol leaves us alone, stunned by the sale she just made so easily, and we have the empty place to ourselves for a while.

It’s the first time I have made love since I lost the baby; obviously it isn’t the first time he has.

My body feels strange, not at all as it used to, but he is kind and gentle and patient, and afterwards I cry.

We sleep for a while, and then he wakes me up and we try again. So much better this time and relief spreads through me as my body comes alive again.

By the time we leave, it's getting dark and my heart aches as we go in opposite directions.

I wonder how it would be if life had been kinder. Would this be our first home together with our little boy?

But he’s a time traveller; he doesn’t do domestic. Life could never be like that and a part of me aches because it really can’t be.


	21. Married Life

_October 2008- alternate universe time (Rose is 22/23)_

 

Gradually, we have fallen into some semblance of a routine. He tries to be around as much as possible although it isn’t as much as I would like. Often I wonder what it will be like when we are back in the same time line. Will he get very bored? Will I?

Sometimes I’ve seen him just watching me from a distance, you know, when I’m out on a mission with my team. He doesn’t want the rest to see him, Mickey… Jake… sometimes Pete; but he wants to keep an eye on me. 

There have been times when he's got involved, usually when a crisis happens, well actually only then and he has found me on my own. He is watching over me, keeping me safe and it drives me barmy sometimes… I can look after myself… mostly.

He comes home to me unannounced on frequent occasions. I may not have seen him for a week or so and then at three o’clock in the morning the bed dips and his arms are about me without any explanation.

Sometimes I feel like the other woman to myself and sometimes I even feel guilty that he is leaving future me to share my bed. And that’s ridiculous, there aren’t two of me, we’re the same.

Then there’s the different states he comes to me in. He is never very much older, but it varies from as I last saw him to about ten to fifteen years older. 

His moods are something else.

He ranges from complete jubilance to the depths of utter despair. He frequently turns up angry and makes no bones about taking me roughly to bed where he must be teaching future me some kind of lesson. Not that I mind, he would never really hurt me. But the fact that he cannot tell me is a barrier that can tear me apart more than anything physical.

Three months ago, he turned up and stayed for over a month. At first I was happy to have him here. I took some time out of work and we stayed in bed for days. It felt like a real honeymoon at last.

As time went by, though, I began to worry about the state of our future relationship and even though I couldn’t ask, I could spell it out.

“If you don’t go back to me… I mean… is that it? We done? Or are we going to catch up with me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I must be very worried… you’ve been gone so long?” Really, when you think about it, it’s all so ludicrous. The future me doesn’t exist yet, does she?

He went back a few days after. I came home from work to find a bunch of red roses and a note. That made me feel so desolate and alone and I wondered if he had taken future me some roses too.

I learnt to gauge him from the look on his face and the age of him. A few times he arrived looking so completely lost that it hurt to see him. He would cry like a baby in my arms and I held him without asking him anything. It seemed the only thing I could do. 

The mood swings always seem worse the younger he is and as he gets older he seems much calmer and at peace with his future. It had been this him who had first come to me in the hospital. In truth, I felt more comfortable with this him than any of the others.

So, I soon realised that the coming back to visit me wasn’t necessarily always about keeping me company in the early years of our marriage while he was (in this timeline) still in the other universe. It was his way of escaping, running from our life together when it got too much.

Was I really that difficult to live with in the future?

I suppose I’m highlighting the occasions that stick out, there have been many more times when he has come and all is well and as normal as it could be in a situation such as ours.

When I am on my own and in between his bouts of indefinite stays I just feel like I’m waiting for life to begin. And waiting. And waiting.

The rest of my life outside of work is a struggle. Mickey seems to hoard some kind of belief that I might have him back and Mum just nags and nags and nags.

“You live your life as if you’re just passing through…” and “You’re not getting any younger…” and “You used to like Mickey well enough… he’s a lovely lad!”

I had no social life; I went to work, did my job and went home again. I suppose it worried them. They had no way of knowing that I was having a sort of marriage with my husband of the past present and future. It confuses me enough, what would it be like for them?

Today was harder still. The nightmares come too easily when I’m alone. I still dream of our lost little boy… the world will always be full of what ifs…

I phoned Mum and told her I wouldn’t be turning up for Sunday roast yet again and after a monumental ear bashing, I went back to bed, hiding my migraine in the dark.

Mickey’s banging reverberated through my head and I dragged myself to the door.

“Rose?” He looked sort of angry and I let him in. He stood staring at me for some time, a muscle pumping in his cheek.

“Got the most gigantic migraine, Mick… was there something you wanted?”

“Your Mum is beside herself, Rose. It’s like you died and left your ghost behind! You lock yourself away here, away from the world. Your Mum had a son last year in case you had forgotten, your brother! Her heart is breaking all over again because her own daughter won’t pull her self together and get on with living!” The words were harsh, I was only too aware about little Tony. I had also had a son last year, only he had been dead. How could I explain without sounding completely selfish that seeing Tony’s progression only opened the wound?

“Mickey, just don’t…” I kept my voice low and steady.

“You used to be so strong, Rose! I used to admire you so much… you’re just a machine now… a… a… Cyberman!”

“You’re not being fair…”

“You and me… you know we used to be something special… the Doctor, he knew it… he would have wanted you to be happy, Rose…”

“With you?”

“What… I’m not good enough now?”

“Mickey… you’ll make someone a wonderful partner…”

“Don’t want someone!”

“I think you'd better leave…”

“You can’t push people away forever… you need someone…”

“I’m fine as I am!” He moved closer to me, within the confines of my personal space, his anger brimming over and making him forget boundaries. 

I know Mickey well, know that he would never do anything to hurt me in any way, but from the outside looking in; it could have looked pretty grim.

The crash of dustbins from the back garden diverted his anger. I saw a shadow move across the window before he turned. My heart stopped and my breath caught.

“Who’s there?” Mickey’s eyes were back on me.

“No one… there’s no one, maybe next doors dog…” Mickey moved to the window and looked out.

“You got someone… what are you hiding?”

“Mickey, there’s no one… I’m just very tired… my head is killing me…”

“You think you need a doctor?” he snorted and I didn’t reply, nor could I meet his eye. He must have assumed I had been out and picked someone up. He left without another word, slamming the door behind him.

Within moments the Doctor walked through the back door with a face like thunder. 

“Just who does he think he is... waltzing in here… accosting my wife?”

“He wasn’t… he’s worried about me… they’re all worried about me… Mickey wouldn’t hurt me…” I was just so weary from pretending and hiding, I just wanted to curl up and wait for the future to come.

Later, the Doctor sets up a security system on my doors and windows that would do Azkaban proud. 

He’s asleep now; don’t know how long he will stay this time. I watch him breathing and try to remember him sleeping like that on our days of travelling on the TARDIS and I can’t.

I wander over to the window and watch the night sky. The stars blink at me and I blink back at them. 

I’m still waiting.


	22. A Very Small Shoe

_Sunday February 12th 2009- alternate universe time (Rose is 22/23)_

There is a crisis going on at work and I am very puzzled.

I haven’t seen the Doctor in three weeks, but that isn’t unusual. He’ll turn up out of the blue and I'll fit around him… like I always do. That sounds like I’m complaining and I’m not, I’m always glad to see him, but I actually need his advice right now and because he's in my future, he should know that.

Christmas was lovely. I thought he was going to juggle between me, but it turned out I had to juggle between my family and him.

And so I did… he actually managed to come to the Manor! I suppose he parked the TARDIS in the woods behind the orchard. He hid in the cellars below and waited until everyone was in bed.

Imagine my surprise when he crept into my bed at midnight on Christmas Eve. For a split second, I was really scared, didn’t know who it was until he spoke.

“Ho, ho, ho… Merry Christmas!” he whispered, breathing into my ear, his hands creeping into my pyjamas.

“What are you doing?” I turned to him in surprise.

“Sshh… I'm wishing you a happy Christmas… wanted to show you that we don’t have to imprison ourselves in the house!”

“Do we?”

“We never go anywhere, do we?”

“Been to paradise in me bed a few times… and who are you calling a ho?”

“Rose… have you been drinking?”

“Yes… its Christmas Eve, Doctor and I am an adult in case you hadn’t noticed?”

“Oh, I noticed…”

That was a marvellous day, that Christmas… every moment I could, I snuck down to the cellar (my pure joy at him being there overcoming my fearful memories of the past) and took him a few Christmassy morsels and myself in the greatest of spirits. No one seemed to notice I was missing, I think they were all just happy that I was there.

January was pretty boring by comparison. Nothing seemed to be going on in the alien front; in fact it was eerily quiet.

Then something happened that really bothered The London Observatory. It appeared they had lost a star, actually more than one, a whole constellation… the Alba Stella Constellation. I mean, how does a whacking great telescope like that lose a cluster of stars?

Torchwood were called in and the first thing we did was have the telescope serviced. It didn’t make a jot of difference; in fact we were getting reports from all over the world that stars were just vanishing from the sky.

Pete was completely out of his depth; yesterday he called me into his office looking very serious indeed.

“I’ve had a meeting with a few special branch heads and some of the world’s leading scientists… it isn’t good news…”

“Oh?”

“The universes appear to be on the verge of merging again… this darkness is taking our universe and we need help.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We need to go back… find a way back… we need the Doctor’s help.”

I could say very little but listened as he told me that a team of people were working on the Dimension Hoppers that they had used the day I got trapped here.

Alarm bells were going off in my head, but I kept quiet and listened on.

So here I am on a Sunday wondering what the hell I am to do, knowing that those Dimension Hoppers are a danger to the walls of the universes themselves, let alone the darkness that seems to be eating this one up!

I feel like Bastian Bux reading the book and wanting to be involved but not being able to because my life here isn’t real… it exists in a nowhere place. 

Funny… wasn’t the cure for that problem in a name?

I am walking back from the corner shop, the Sunday paper and a bottle of milk in my hand. The world keeps going and it’s hard to believe that we are all in imminent danger.

I am so lost in thoughts when I walk through the door that seeing him there is a bit of a shock and I drop the milk and it smashes all over the floor.

He jumps up, casting the book he was reading aside. _‘Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.’_ There’s some irony in that.

“Rose?”

“Oh God, I’m so glad to see you!” I fling myself into his arms and he hugs me tightly, clearly my reaction has shocked him.

“I’ve only been a couple of weeks, Rose!”

“Three weeks and you must know about all this, you must know?”

“Ah…”

“The stars are going out… the darkness is engulfing space… the dimensions are merging…” I gabble out.

“Calm down… slowly now… sit down and start from the beginning…”

We sit on the sofa we chose together from an internet furnishers and he holds my hands and talks me through all that has happened since he was last here.

“It all started just after you left… The Observatory, they lost The Alba Constellation…”

“Alba?” His voice is sharp and I am worried.

“Yes… Alba something Constellation… does that mean anything to you?”

“It might… carry on, Rose.” So I continue, explaining all that has been happening and how concerned I am.

He didn’t really react at all, it was as if he knew where all this was headed and of course afterwards, I realise he does.

“Right… well… it’s not going to be easy for you, Rose because you’re going to have to do a lot of convincing… and all I can do is equip you with the right information…”

I am stunned at his almost off-handedness and anger bubbles inside me, which I struggle to quench because it isn’t his fault he already knows what’s going on and it isn’t his fault he can’t tell me.

He sits for hours at the kitchen table, writing in that strange way he does. Gallifreyan, he calls it. It looks like loads of circles overlapping. It’s beautiful. Occasionally he draws a diagram and they make almost as little sense as his native hand writing.

I take him cups of tea after tea (make the walk back to the shop to replace the milk and I think he hardly notices when I leave!) and I watch as the light fades around him. I want to sketch him, sitting at our table, working so hard. It is almost domestic and it fills me with hope. One day he will sit at our table every day.

‘And then?’ the little voice in my head whispers and I’m shocked at myself. I love him, as much as anyone can love anyone and that's enough, surely?

“Rose?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Get my specs from my pocket will you? The light’s awful now!”

I wander over to his jacket, flicking on a wicker lamp I had picked up in a junk shop as I pass.

His jacket is hanging on the door and I reach into the right pocket absent-mindedly. My hand hits something soft and a little bit fluffy. I pull it out and stare at it not quite understanding what it is and why it is in his pocket.

It’s a tiny, pale pink knitted bootee. My eyes flicker over to him; his head crouched low over his drawings and as if he senses me staring at him, he looks up at me.

“What?” he asks slowly and I don’t know what else I can do, my heart his hammering inside my chest. I hold the bootee up and show him.

“We can’t… you said… we can’t have… we’re not… Doctor?”


	23. Alba: An Introduction

_May 2nd 2009- alternative universe time (Rose is 23/24)_

 

A pink bootee. 

I stood staring at him, the colour draining from my cheeks and so many questions running around my head and all the while knowing that they weren’t going to be answered right then as I needed them to be.

“Oh, Rose…” He looked utterly defeated as he pushed back his chair and strode over to me by the door.

“You said…”

“I said it would be alright… and you know how it goes, Rose… and you just have to trust me on this…” The bitter irony wasn’t lost on me as he accidentally used Pete’s old catch-phrase and tears welled up in my eyes.

“Please…” I begged him… I wondered if he knew exactly how much losing our son had affected me as he closed his arms about me.

“Rose… I… I can’t….”

“Listen… it’s you and me… yeah? I know now… you have to tell me!”

“It would be wrong… what if it caused damage…”

“This belongs to our baby?” I pulled back, waving the bootee in his face. He stared at me thoughtfully and then nodded ever so slightly. A new feeling rushed through me, one of pure joy. I felt as if something inside clicked back into place and he knew that just that nod of his head had changed me.

“But Rose… if I thought for one minute… I mean my family is everything to me… if all this could even hint at possibly endangering you and Alba, I could never forgive myself!”

“Alba?” He hadn’t realised his slip of the tongue until I repeated her name… it was like music to my ears.

“That’s it, that’s all you’re getting… please don’t do this Rose!”

But it was enough for me and I collapsed back into his arms in happy tears.

After he left, I googled the name… I remembered that it was that lost constellation but I wanted more.

Alba. It is used in Spain and Italy and means sunrise (appropriate, I think). In Gaelic, it means Scotland (again, appropriate to us). It is a skin condition (euww); the beginning of a name of a constellation of stars (knew that already). In Latin it forms the name of a root or of white matter (definitely!) and it is also the name of a little white wild Rose (which has to be the most appropriate of all!) Finally (and I stopped here), it is the name of a French poem or love song written about lover’s separating at dawn. This interprets to me as completely right. So far our whole relationship is about separation, isn’t it?

********

So, after that evening, I had to put her to the back of my head and not mention her while I concentrated on trying to get back to the other universe to bring my husband here. And it was my husband who was the brains behind us getting him back!

Over that day and night he designed something that he called a ‘Dimension Cannon’. He tried to make me understand as best he could, but it was very complicated and as he talked I began to worry about how I could convince them back at Torchwood that I had come up with this idea on my own and would they even consider it if they did?

Pete listened, he always listened, and he respected the knowledge I had picked up when I was travelling with the Doctor. But they really couldn’t make sense of the complicated designs I presented them with and it was obvious they believed I had become unhinged as Pete tried to explain to me gently in his office.

“Rose… we haven’t got time to mess about; the Hoppers were good enough last time…”

“This is safer… more accurate… a Dimension Hopper is much more destructive than this!”

“How could such a thing be proved?”

“Pete… you have to understand… I can’t explain it… but I know… I know!”

“And I have every faith in you Rose, but the rest of them… they’re the world’s best and undoubtedly, you have more hands on experience, but you aren’t qualified and I just won’t be able to persuade them any different and I can hardly blame them given what you’ve been through on top.” I chose to ignore the last.

“Fine, then… let me have a lab… access to all materials in the store rooms and let me have a go at it myself!”

“You really know what you’re doing?”

“I… don’t ask…” I pleaded with him and he was weakening.

“This stays between you and me, there’ll be no spare capital to fund it… we need to manufacture a lot of Hopper’s…”

That was the last of many meetings I had had with him and I knew he was just humouring me because he hadn’t ever seen me enthuse about anything before. I think he wanted to nurture my confidence or some such parenting rubbish. It didn’t matter, I got my own way.

The irony wasn’t lost on me when Pete told me the only working space big enough was the Wall Room where no one wanted to work anyway. I think there has been much superstition about it since the first time. Everyone’s afraid that the void is going to open up and suck them in.

The Doctor said that it was probably the best place to build it, that there are certain areas where the dimension walls are thinnest and that room is one of them. That isn’t really hard to work out though, is it?

I waited in that room, he swore he would be there and it was hard for me to look at that wall… the one I broke against. I could even make out the smudge of mascara I left behind. It brought back so much pain.

It was very late, that was what we agreed, a skeletal staff and him being able to move around more freely than if it were day.

The door opened and an old man walked in,

“I’m sorry… this is out of bounds, its top secret… code….” But I stopped as the Doctor took out his Sonic, disabled the CCTV cameras and whipped off a rather brilliant and convincing disguise.

From there it was pretty easy…. we wandered around that place as if we owned it, his disguise making it possible to be the Professor Smith he had imagined on his psychic paper.

We took shopping trolley full after shopping trolley full up in the lifts from the basement. I watched, made tea and helped him whenever possible. It felt almost like old times.

It took three nights to build his Dimension Cannon, that’s all.

“You keep forgetting, Rose, I’m brilliant!”

“And this’ll work?” I ask doubtfully looking at the ring of mirrors and chewing on my lip.

“You doubting me? Course it will… I think it will… yes! It has to work!” And I know he's right, because I had seen a glimpse of the future and I need that future to happen. We both do.

“So, what’s the plan?” I ask as I walk around inside the ring of mirrors.

“The thing is, Rose… you know it has to be you?”

“Yes.” I know it has to be me because he can actually tell me that much.

“We can’t involve Pete, or anyone else, come to that… he wouldn’t let you go… he wouldn’t risk the slap from Jackie if nothing else.”

“Shut up!” I answer, hiding my fear. The Doctor does like to tease me about the relationship my not-dad tries to have with me. I wonder if he will still do that when he is actually here properly.

“So… you ready, then?”

“What, now?” I'm shocked; I didn’t expect an immediate trip.

“Did you see how dark it was today? Soon there will be no daylight at all; Rose… we have little time left!”

I go to the loo and sit shaking in a cubicle… I am going to do this… but it doesn’t stop me being scared. Who wouldn’t be?

I think of my Doctor and I know it will be alright, he wouldn’t send me if it weren’t, would he? I get out my phone and stare at my contacts.

I’m doing this to save the universes, that’s true, but most of all I’m doing this for the love of the Doctor and... for Alba... our future…

I send a text to mum, three words and I send it.

By the time she gets it I’ll be in time and distance immeasurable...


	24. Fragments

_5th July 2009- alternative universe time and 5th July 2008 real time (Rose is 23/24)_

 

I’m in the TARDIS. Really, I am and I am so confused… it isn’t working quite how I had seen it. I don’t like it… something is amiss.

That first jump was so exhilarating. I mean, it takes the breath out of you and you feel as if your bones are rubber, but it’s so thrilling at the same time. 

I found myself walking down a crowded London street, so weird to see a sky without zeppelins after all that time! Something big had just been happening…something alien… and that could only mean one thing. My Doctor must have been in the vicinity. My key had locked onto the TARDIS, but I couldn’t see it. I knew I wouldn’t have had time that time. I would soon be pulled back by my Doctor. Weird.

I walked to some railings to observe the crowd and a woman with brilliant red hair turned to me with a smile. She was shrieking down her mobile quite obviously to her mother. I couldn’t get a word in, but it was strange how familiar she seemed to me. I mean, hair like that, you’d remember, right?

She asked me to point out the bin nearby for the woman, her mother, when she came. I said nothing; already I could feel the pull of the dimensions. She went in one direction and I in another. I would, at that point, have bet everything I was going to inherit on my travelling further than her. Now, I’m not so sure…

It was very dark when I landed back in the circle and the Doctor crouched beside me.

“Thanks God!” he hissed.

“Why are the lights off?”

“Sshh… Rose… are you alright?”

“Yeah… m’fine… bit wobbly… what’s happened?”

“You’ve been gone days!”

“Minutes!”

“They came up here looking for you...”

“They?”

“Pete, Mickey… your Mum… they know something’s up… the cannon sets all their machinery off downstairs!”

“Did they find you?”

“No… I hid… but this was the first opportunity I’ve actually had to bring you back... I’m so sorry…”

“Seriously, I’ve only been gone about ten minutes, I don’t understand!” The Doctor sat back from me and observed me as if I was some unfathomable conundrum.

“This universe is a little ahead, but I believed it to be that missing year… I must be wrong… this whole universe must tick over much faster…” He was mumbling to himself.

“Missing year? My missing year?” 

“No… something else… look, it doesn’t matter, there’ll be plenty of time for catching up afterwards… what did you see?”

“London… there was something going on, but I didn’t see you… there was this ginger woman… I was sort of drawn to her…”

“Ginger? Big mouth and an attitude like your mum?”

“Yeah… Oi, leave my mum out of it! Who is she?”

“Someone I travelled with for a while…”

“You what?”

“She was a friend… we don’t have much time, the power surge this thing created will have them on their way… you ready for another?”

“Was a friend…? Another jump…? I’ve hardly had time to breath!”

“I know, Rose, but if we don’t… if you don’t... we may run out of time… they’ll likely dismantle it and you may get completely stuck!”

“Fine…” I stumbled to my feet and he steadied me, fear and love in his eyes.

“I’m sor…”

“Don’t… just don’t say it… it isn’t your fault….” I interrupted.

I stood amongst the mirrors wondering if I would see him again, I felt so desperately sad as he soniced the cannon back to life and sent me on my way.

It was Christmas and there was pandemonium afoot again… always there was pandemonium.

The Thames was dry and there were sirens everywhere… I followed the chaos and my instincts. I heard that someone had died under the water, drowned and my stomach began to rise to my throat. I didn’t realise that I was running down the street at full pelt until I saw her, the red head again and I skidded to a halt, she knew the Doctor, she could help, surely?

“What happened, what did they find?” I asked breathlessly, “I’m sorry, but… did they find someone?” She looked at me without any recognition.

“I don’t know. Bloke called the Doctor or something.”

“Where is he?” My eyes searched behind her, desperate to see him…

“They took him away, he’s dead.” I felt sick; something had gone drastically wrong… had I done something to alter the path of reality? I had been here so briefly, but I knew how delicate these things can be sometimes. The butterfly effect and all that. “Sorry. Did you know him? I mean, they didn’t say his name, it could be any Doctor.” She was suddenly aware how she must have sounded to me and I saw a stirring of compassion.

“…I came so far,” I said, utterly defeated.

“Could be anyone,” she added hopefully. I stopped and looked at her wondering what it was about her that was drawing me to her and not to the Doctor. It’s his DNA that I should have been pulled to, I saw him use it himself in the Dimension Cannon… that was the second time I had ended up meeting her. That couldn’t be an accident.

“What’s your name?” 

“Donna. And you?” Panic swept through me, I knew I couldn’t give her any information, irreparable damage could be done and there was something odd going on. I swear that I could vaguely make out something large and unworldly clinging to her back.

“I’m just… passing by, I’m not… I shouldn’t even be here. This is wrong. This is so wrong. What was it, sorry, Donna what?”

“Why do you keep looking at my back?” she almost snapped at me.

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You keep looking behind me, you’re doing it now. What is it, what’s there? Has someone put something on my back?”

I felt the pull in my stomach as she desperately tried to look over each shoulder. I know that when I disappeared, she didn’t see, but how must it have seemed to her when she looked back at thin air?

I coughed and spluttered and he was right there with a glass of water. The room was virtually in darkness, I think it was only the reflection of white wall in mirrors that cast any light at all.

“How long?” I croaked.

“A month. I had to leave, but I came back as soon as I could. I can’t pull you back until I get a signal on you."

“They didn’t dismantle it?”

“No… they investigated the last power surge, but truthfully, the whole place is in virtual darkness, they’re too busy concentrating on the Dimension Hoppers to worry about this. They think you’re gone, that you found a way back… your mum was here… frantic only half describes it. What happened?”

“Something’s gone very wrong… this Donna woman… I keep finding her, not you… this time… you… you were… dead… drowned... underneath the Thames… she didn’t even know who you were. And, Doctor, there was something on her back… something alien…”

“Listen, Rose… I didn’t think this would happen again… I thought that because it was falsely set, that it wasn’t part of time and events, it seems that I’m wrong. Donna Noble, at this point, is very important… probably the most important woman in that universe… she’s run into trouble and a parallel has been created around her, one where she doesn’t meet me… and that can’t happen. If she doesn’t meet me then I will drown and none of this can happen. The worlds will not be saved.”

“What do we do?”

“You have to go back and reverse it, help her to reverse it… persuade her. You will have to find the TARDIS there and use her to build your own Cannon… not as sophisticated as this, enough to send her back… I can’t help you other than draw you a diagram… you need to contact Unit there… tell them Code Purple and they will completely co operate.”

“But, Doctor…” He was scribbling down a diagram with instructions, trying to keep it as basic as possible.

“The TARDIS will be weak, but she will help… this will be the last jump from here, Rose… anything you do now, it will be from the other side. Next time you travel here it will be with me in the TARDIS…”

“If I get it right…”

“You will… listen… Donna needs to get out of the city for Christmas… there's going to be a terrible accident and most of London will be wiped out… if I’m dead I can’t possibly stop the Titanic from crashing…”

“What?”

“Space liner… long story… just get her and her family out of London or you won’t be able to reverse it!”

“How do I do that?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something… you’re brilliant!”

“I love you…” I whispered the words because suddenly it felt so very final. From then on, if things went according to plan, we’d be in the same time line and I wouldn’t have any visits from the future to worry about, just a husband who disappeared to the past rather a lot! He took me gently in his arms and kissed me so tenderly that it bought tears to my eyes.

“I love you too… and I cannot lie... things are going to be tough… we will have… obstacles in the way… but I’m proof that you can do it… remember that in your deepest darkest moments. Remember that I’m here for you and for… Alba…” We hadn’t mentioned her name since I found the pink bootee and I felt my heart strings tug as he let me go. He was pale and looked at if he might throw up. I knew he was more terrified than I’ve ever seen him.

“Why would you drown without Donna to stop you?” I asked as I stood in the circle.

“I… I had just lost the love of my life… I was distraught… I was angry at an alien for trying to take over the world… I suppose I got carried away… Donna stopped me…”

“You… you nearly killed yourself over me?”

“It’s why I came to visit you here… I was terrified you might do the same... grief is a strange thing…”

I didn’t reply, just nodded sadly, remembering the depths of my grief and how I had turned off from the world before and after losing the baby.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be!” And then I was pulled away and back to the other universe where everything was upside down.

I found myself in a residential street in Chiswick. It was night time and, as I brushed myself off I was startled by three figures dressed in black all hoisting weapons towards me.

“To the ground!” barked one of them and I fell to my knees, head down. I was cuffed and pushed into the back of a van without saying a word. 

Unit headquarters… a coincidence? I think not.

Captain Erisa Magambo was sharp and to the point, but as soon as I mentioned the Doctor’s code, she stopped asking me my name and listened carefully to my brief.

From thereon it was pretty easy. Apparently, I had already been back and left her a message to say I was on my way.

The TARDIS was stored in a warehouse there and I was shocked and saddened at her state. I stroked her lovingly and she responded surprising the Captain who, until that point, had believed her completely dead.

We worked as a team, me, her and a carefully chosen team. The TARDIS helped me as much as she could although I found it hard to completely understand her workings.

The first jump was terrifying, scarier than with the Doctor. He knew what he was doing, I was just hoping.

The blast that threw me into Donna’s vicinity was far greater than anything I had endured with the Doctor and I was sent running out of an alleyway at top speed.

There were a few encounters like this, and at first Donna was angry and didn’t want to let me in. Gradually, she realised that I was important to her.

In the TARDIS even, everything went back to Donna, right from her birth, it seemed that she was destined for something huge… I had learnt a little about reading timelines during my travels with the Doctor and the TARDIS was able to help me follow her path.

It appeared that Donna Noble was destined for far greater things than just creating a parallel around herself. Although it wasn’t within my capabilities to see exactly what.

I was sent back to plant a winning raffle ticket in her desk. If she bothered to check it, it would mean a stay in a luxury hotel over Christmas. We needed her out of there or else all would be lost.

After that crash in London, Donna’s world became a harsh place. There were no jobs, no money, people were evacuated out of the city and re-housed only to be overcrowded with sometimes up to four families sharing a standard three bed-roomed house.

Finally, Donna was ready to reverse her life and go back to the point where the wrong decision had been made. The TARDIS had found the crossroad of her dimension. It was a simple turn. Instead of turning left as she should have done and thus sealed her fate in meeting the Doctor, she had turned right and her life had taken the wrong course.

We had to help her go back and persuade herself to turn left.

I was a little familiar with the workings of Tricksters, once, when I was first travelling with the Doctor, I'd been captured by a Graske (nasty little creature) and the Doctor had rescued me before his boss, The Trickster, had tried to alter my life.

Donna had a Trickster’s beetle on her back. With the cannon we built, we were able to show her it.

She was terrified.

“What is it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Oh, thanks!”

“It feeds off time. By changing time, by making someone’s life take a different turn. The meetings never made. The children never born. A life never loved. But with you…”

“I never did anything important.”

Donna was persuaded and somewhere along the way, I think she had convinced herself that if she reversed her life that she would be alright. I had been brutally honest with her, whatever happened, she was going to die.

It didn’t take long to send her back and I was quick to follow, just to see that all was going according to plan.

I saw her step out in front of the lorry, wondering what the hell was going on, and then seeing the traffic banking up, I realised.

I was by her side as she took her last breath and I whispered in her ear as this version of her died.

Erisa Magambo was satisfied when I returned, the TARDIS was gone, but the warehouse holding the cannon had been kept in tact.

I made a jump using the last bits of energy of the dying parallel to leave a few messages in case the Doctor still didn’t get it.

Then I was blasted onto a street in a London where a Dalek invasion of gigantic proportion was happening.

My search for the Doctor was narrowing.

It was like I was one step behind him and at one point he seemed to completely disappear. 

I found Donna’s family and on screen a host of the Doctor’s allies including Jack, who I thought had died by Dalek extermination years ago.

Then there he was, with Donna... and he looked so much younger, so much thinner, and so much more haggard. But he couldn’t see me. It didn’t stop him mentioning me.

Finally, I locked in on the TARDIS and signalled Erisa to send me to the coordinates I sent her.

I was at the top of this deserted street and there in the distance was my beloved TARDIS all lit up and back to herself again.

Two figures were right beside her talking, one with his pin striped back to me, the other with that unmistakable red hair.

I stood, holding this huge gun that I knew the Doctor would be abhorred by, but that I needed in case of Dalek attack.

He turned, saw me and we simultaneously broke into a run.

Oh, it was so impressive, seeing my husband who I knew hadn’t seen me in three years at least, running towards me at full pelt. He looked like a lean thorough bred race horse charging towards the winning post.

Foolish of us to let our guards down with Daleks about, it was on us before we knew it and my Doctor was struck.

There was a flash of blue and the Dalek was blown apart as I made my way to the Doctor.

Jack had arrived and killed the Dalek just a moment too late.

We dragged the Doctor into the TARDIS and I could see exactly what was going to happen.

I remember thinking how much I didn’t want him to change, how much I loved this face and thinking about my visits from the future in the other universe in utter confusion.

I watched in disbelief as he sent his glowing regeneration energy into a jar by the console. When the glowing stopped, he was still him and a hand under the console had somehow managed to take his regeneration energy.

Then we were pulled aboard the Crucible, the Dalek ship, and we were prisoners.

It all seemed to go so slowly, the events that unfolded in the basement of the Dalek ship, but it really was so little time.

The creator of the Daleks was a disgusting looking creature with such an unsavoury look in his eye that it quite unnerved me, more than any other alien I’ve encountered, truth be told.

Donna was trapped inside the TARDIS and he ordered its destruction right then and there with her still inside.

The Doctor was so upset, he ordered Davros to put him in her place. I was surprised how little emotion he displayed when Jack was murdered by comparison.

So much happened there that it is all a bit of a blur. I’m too shocked at the outcome to actually recount it all.

Suffice to say that my Mum and Mickey turned up along with Sarah Jane Smith and Jack who had somehow cheated death by Dalek a second time. And this girl called Martha who seemed nice, although I was a little alarmed that she was prepared to take the world down with her if the Daleks continued.

And then right at the last minute, just when you think the end of the universe is right there, something amazing happens.

The TARDIS materialised and the Doctor appeared at the door. Was he creating his own paradox in order to save the universes? Apparently not.

He was another Doctor, grown from the hand that he had siphoned his regeneration energy into.

I was a watcher in this strange turn of events. Mad Daleks and Dalek creators and Donna Noble behaving completely out of character, in fact behaving suspiciously like the… Doctor.

It was her who saved us all in the end and the three of them working together to send the stolen planets back to their rightful places was a thing I will never forget.

Even now, when we’re all inside the TARDIS and there is celebration in the air. Even with the new Doctor killing off the Daleks and making the old one angry although, God knows, I’m as guilty as he is! Even with the hugging and the pure adrenalin of it, I have such a feeling twisting in my gut… like I’ve been stabbed.

My heart is pounding and something isn’t ringing true.

And now we have stopped and we are at the beach, back in the alternate and it is like I’m watching my whole life unfold.

He’s leaving me here and he’s going back. Taking Donna with him and going back. I get this human version of him as compensation and I feel the burning anger build up in me.

I don’t even think about this new Doctor’s feelings as he admits his love for me; I kiss him out of anger, out of spite. I kiss him so that my husband will burn with the memory of it forever.

The TARDIS leaves and I run after it, hoping he will change his mind and take me. 

I stand gazing at the empty space and then that, oh, so familiar hand grips mine. I look to my left and our eyes meet.

The anger courses through me as realisation hits home. I yank my hand out of his and storm up the beach as fast as I can. 

I won’t stop until there are as many miles as possible separating us.


	25. An Unpleasant Scene

_July 15th 2009-alternate universe time …forever (Rose is 24)_

 

I’m at the house… it took me three days to get here, but I did it. The whole place seems so empty and useless to me now. It was a home in my head for nearly three years, with a man who didn’t exist.

I was livid… stormed off that beach with my mum whining after me. He didn’t follow, lucky for him because I don’t know what I may have done.

I hitched my way to the ferry and put the distance between us as I promised. I don’t know where he is… with Mum, I expect, getting all the sympathy… if only she knew!

Pete called round, tried to talk it over with me, but I closed down, said that all he needed to do was keep the ‘Doctor’ as far away from me as possible and to leave me alone.

Mum calls and I keep the conversation neutral… for once she seems to have found some sensitivity about it.

I keep going over and over it in my head… and nothing makes sense anymore. I know I will have to face him sometime, just when I get my head around it. I need space and time… ironic, isn’t it?

It’s quite obvious what's happened to me now… and it makes sense. How I didn’t notice his double pulse had disappeared is beyond me. I suppose if you aren’t looking for something...

It makes me wonder exactly how much of my life with him was real… how much was false…

I cried for three days when I got back, my anger kept me travelling, I wasn’t worried about been picked up by the wrong type, I think if anyone had tried anything that I might very well have torn them apart with my bare hands!

Now, I alter between anger and tears. And worry. Then when that creeps in, I am angry at myself.

It’s been ten days and it feels like ten years. 

I haven’t been anywhere, talked to anyone other than Pete and my mother and that was very brief… I don’t expect a visit from that deceiving bastard, although I want there to be one so I can tell him what I think of him.

No, he was quite clear about it. No more visits from the future… I’m in the now now. And I hate it.

That stupid, stupid man… both of them… 

Why did he do that? I really thought I was everything to him and yet he just left me… with a copy… a duplicate… a replica. Not him. Not my husband.

And where do I stand on the adultery front in all this? He obviously had no qualms about sleeping with me, but I feel a little abused by it. He shouldn’t have. Whatever those years were to me, they’re tarnished now.

And how on earth does he expect me to build on that? How can I sort it out in my head?

My husband… the man I love… is on another universe and he won’t ever be coming back… he could have taken me, but he didn’t.

He chose to go with that gobby red head instead…. Why? Because she is ‘part Time Lord’ now? We were soul mates, or so I thought. 

He thought it was better to leave the humans to it and made sure it was nowhere where he was going to witness it. 

I will never see him again.

That tears me apart in so many different directions. He, this new 'Doctor' has led me to believe that he was coming back for me, that he would give up that universe for me. How deluded was I? Of course, the man I know would never have done that, would he?

This new ‘Doctor,’ I wonder when he decided it would be acceptable to go back and pay me visits. I wonder how he did it. He cannot possibly have grown a new TARDIS from that lump of coral the Doctor gave him in such a short time, could he? Mind you… he was so young looking on the beach. All new and freshly grown. I hope he’s okay… I mean, it must be strange… no… no… no! I will not do that. I will not develop feelings for him other than this white hot anger I feel right now!

Now wait a minute… there’s someone out in the back garden… I’m getting up to look. All I need now is an intruder!

It’s him… he’s found his way into the back garden! I’m going to the door, he’s gonna get it now!

“Rose…”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I needed to…”

“Not from me, you don’t… I ain’t got nothing more for you to need mate… get off my property… sling your hook before I call the police!”

“Rose… won’t you just hear me out?” Why does he look at me like that with those eyes so sad and forlorn… like a puppy that’s been kicked?

“No... short and simple… I don’t want to hear it!”

“Rose…”

“Ms. Tyler to you… now, this is your second chance and you know the rules about them… get off my property!”

“I don’t understand… why are you doing this… is there someone else?”

I pace up to him in angry strides, the past ten days beginning to spew like Mount Vesuvius.

“I wish there was… I wish I had never met you… I wish that I could reverse it all and go back to being just me…” By now I was really worked up, all the emotions that I had been brewing sizzling to the surface. He stood his ground, admittedly looking a little scared, but more than that, he was horrified by my words.

“You don’t mean that… you can’t… Rose, its our chance to have a proper life… we can live as man and wife now… do domestic… we can have a proper wedding… in a church with your mum there and Pete can give you away… we can have a family…” The words came out fast, as if he had rehearsed something much more elaborate but my words and temper had unnerved him.

His words only make Vesuvius erupt.

“A family! How dare you use that on me… manipulating... conniving… you know what? I’m almost glad I lost the baby now… at least we get a clean break of it… I wish I had died along with him… it would have at least spared me this!” Even though I’m rambling a tiny part of me can see what my words have done to him. This newly grown man looks utterly broken. 

He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

“You lost a baby…” It isn’t a question; just a repetition and tears are streaming down his face. Guilt invades my anger, but I still don’t have it in me to stop.

The next thing I know is that two Torchwood operatives are upon him and he is on the ground being cuffed.

He isn’t even looking at me as he lies prone on the ground looking like he’s given up.

I can feel myself choking on the tears and I don’t want him to see me cry, so I go in and turn my back on him as they take him away.

What have I done? What have I done? 

I fall to the floor and rock myself in the dark; as if proving me wrong, the pain just got a hundred times worse.


	26. What Goes Around Comes Around

_July 16th 2009 (Rose is 24)_

 

I want to get out of here. These walls are closing in on me. They're full of memories I no longer believe in.

I’m cocooned in bed and I’m all cried out, I feel empty, hollow, there’s nothing left.

The phone rings and rings and I ignore it. I’m surprised my mother hasn’t come calling. Not that I want to see her.

This whole day, I have just been going through the motions. 

I can’t taste, can’t see, can’t even breath like I used to.

I’m right back where I was the day I first got trapped here. But something doesn’t feel quite right. 

Oh, great, now I have guilt.

I remember the day that we found this house, how he was insistent that we see the back first and how, after all the other rejections, he told me this was our first home. He was very upset that day. 

Now I know why.

However I look at it, I know that how I told him was cruel and heartless. My anger got the better of me. He looked so completely devastated. It isn’t his fault, he didn’t ask to be grown, didn’t ask to be pushed out of all he knows, away from the TARDIS and the universe he was born to. I had no right to… no, but he masqueraded as something else… he let me believe that he was him and he isn’t. He looks like him, yeah, has the same memories, yeah… but that’s it. There can’t be two of him. He told me as much way back when he wore his leather jacket.

And that’s something that’s been bothering me. There are no parallel Time Lords… but when Donna created her own parallel there certainly had been. I don’t understand that at all. I mean, the way I do understand it, is that parallels are created by a differing turn of events, it can be something tiny, but each parallel is genuine. Each person within that parallel is ‘duplicated’ for want of a better word.

What if there was another Doctor here? What if my Time Lord had got it wrong? It’s scary to think there could be another one of him. One who doesn’t know me at all.

I drift in and out of consciousness… sleep is hard and when it does come the images are dark and haunting and I wake seconds after I have dropped off in a cold sweat.

I can hear banging coming from somewhere and I don’t know whether it’s in my dreams or in my reality. I don’t even know what my reality is any more.

It’s the front door, I can hear someone now. It better not be… oh, it’s Pete. What does he want?

“Pete?”

“Is he here?” He barges past me without a by your leave or anything.

“Who… what… no!”

“You’re sure?”

“What’s happened?”

“He escaped… went berserk… wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t watched it back on film. Ripped the cell open like it was paper and tore through seven operatives. Left the building at top speed, that was a few hours ago.”

“What the hell did you put him in a cell for?”

“The team believed him a danger to the public… a danger to himself... a danger to you….”

“He wouldn’t hurt me!”

“Nevertheless, he was detained here… you were screaming at him… he avoided the front and tried to sneak in the back. He’s a liability… a genocidal maniac…”

“Who told you that?”

“Well… Jackie said that... he… did…” 

“You have no trace on him? Oh, my god he could do anything!”

“That’s what I was saying!”

“No… you don’t understand… I said some things… I was angry… we have to find him…” I’m away to the door, but quickly I realise Pete’s not following. I turn back to him with my hand on the door knob. “What?”

“As pleased as I am that you’ve decided to join the rest of the world, Rose… I don’t think they’re ready for Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth in her pyjamas!” I suddenly feel close to tears as I remember my Doctor doing exactly that. How long ago that seems now.

I get dressed quickly and we both head for Torchwood. It’s a virtually silent journey and I feel a little uncomfortable, clearly Pete has something on his mind.

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?” I ask after a while.

“What?”

“You’re very quiet.”

“Things aren’t exactly adding up, Rose… something is definitely amiss…”

“Yeah… I was just going to ask… why was my house under surveillance?”

“For your own safety…”

“Really?”

“He must have got your address and seen them on the street and made his way through the hedging at the back…”

“Possibly… look… I’m not ready to… I mean, it’s very confusing, Pete. It’s important we locate him, make sure he's safe, but as for all the questions, I don’t think I can cope.”

“Ah, well, you see, Rose, I’m really sorry about this, but I’m under orders… it was either this or you were going to be arrested by the military.”

“What?”

“I’m to take you into Torchwood for official questioning… sorry, but I really fought your corner… the negotiation was that I would take responsibility in bringing you in…”

“Why?”

“I want you safe… but we all have a job to do and you’ve been holding back… everyone’s asking questions…”

“I’m not hiding anything!”

“Professor Smith?”

“No… now wait a minute…” I bit my lip and vaguely tried the door, knowing that it would be deadlocked, “Mum’ll kill you!” I hiss.

“Your mother thinks you need to be interviewed too, as a matter of fact.”

As I am escorted into Canary Wharf a strange foreboding fills me… it is like the whole world is turning against me. 

I wonder about him, that human Doctor… I wonder where he has gone and if he is alright.

I think of Alba.

I am alone in a hostile world… one where I thought I was safe.


	27. Eat Or Be Eaten

_16th/17th July 2009- (Rose is 24)_

 

I’m sitting in my office, not a cell, but I know I’m locked in. Pete has been handling all interviews and has made sure that they don’t come down too heavy on me. You can tell they’re exasperated and accusations of him being too closely involved have been bandied about loudly in the corridors.

Saul is a little scary when he wants to be and this is the first time I’ve been on the receiving end. He seems not to be holding back much, there is no patience and the urgency they have about them is almost tangible.

What am I supposed to do now? I have no idea where he is. True, he may have put a couple of our team in hospital, but he didn’t kill them and I know that when a man like that’s storm breaks, he is quite capable of more. Much more.

Pete is here.

“Listen, Rose, they want to keep you here overnight… you’ll be fine, under guard, but you can use the dorms… I need to get back, your mother has been threatening to come down here and you know she has an injunction after the last time…”

“Wouldn’t do to have two Tyler women under arrest now would it… Dad?”

“You aren’t under arrest, Rose…”

“So, I can leave, then?” He shakes his head gently but doesn’t answer, “no, thought as much…”

“Just have a shower, get some rest; you’ll be home by tomorrow.”

“Yeah… sure you can trust Saul and his thugs?”

“I am in charge here, Rose, what I say goes… I trust my team… you used to too. Just answer the questions as best you can and it'll all be over.”

I turn away from him and moments afterwards the door clicks quietly shut.

Teah escorts me to the dorms and locks me into the little room reserved for the night roster staff and those employees who need to stay overnight for some reason or another.

She is very quiet, but I get the distinct impression she isn’t happy about the way I’m being treated.

“You stopping out there?” I ask her before she locks me in.

“No, unfortunately, I’m not… I’ve been up for twenty hours as it is, I’ll get into trouble if I don’t clock out soon.”

“Ah, well… I’m sure I’ll be fine…” I sigh and she nods, but I can see she is looking troubled. She and I both know how much some Torchwood agents like to play when the cat’s away.

“Rose…”

“Teah… you, of all people know I can look after myself… go home… I’ll still be here in the morning, yeah?”

It’s barely an hour later, I suppose they really think I drank the cup of tea sent up for me and would be drowsy by now. 

The door opens abruptly and Saul stands above me. I know he won’t really hurt me, but his mean of interrogation are a little unorthodox at times.

“Come on… time to answer a few questions without Daddy breathing down our necks…”

I get up, still fully dressed and head for the door. I really do respect the man and can understand why he’s being this way. His friends are in hospital and he thinks I have the answers he needs.

Sitting in the interrogation room with those bright lights hitting my eyeballs, I begin to sympathise less.

“Saul, seriously, if I had anything to tell, I would. I signed the Torchwood contract too.”

“Come on, Rose… everyone knows where your loyalties lie… just look at Mickey… one of the best and he went as soon as he had the chance!”

“It’s different and you know it!”

“Rose… you know the way it goes… if you don’t start helping us; we may have to jog your memory…”

“You can’t use Veritas Pentothal on me without a doctor present, Saul, you’d be breeching protocol and you know it!”

“Well… unfortunately two of our doctors were injured by yours… perhaps you could summon him up and he could oversee it? No… well there’s always B67…”

“Saul, you know the dangers linked between Retcon and Veritas Pentothal? Is that what you do when the inmates aren’t co operating? You think no one will know I’ve been Mickeyed? What happens if you wipe my memory, Saul, who is accountable then?”

“You’ve been out of sorts for days; Rose… it could be anything…”

For the first time I feel fear at my predicament. Before, I was just in a state of indignant boredom about it all. But if they were going to start digging around in my head for information and then fiddle about with erasing parts of my memory, then I had a reason to be worried. The side effects for these drugs alone were sometimes catastrophic, let alone mixing them together.

“You can’t…” I say quietly, weighing up the odds and knowing I had no chance.

“Name calling, Rose? Tut, tut….” It’s an in-house joke of ours and not really that funny, but I smile weakly at him, trying to show him I’m not bothered, “I’ll be back in a mo, don’t go wandering off…” he chuckles a little nastily and leaves, bolting the door after him.

For a moment, I sit there staring at the door. I had saved that man’s life five or six times since I had been with Torchwood; he had saved mine a couple of times too. We were friends, weren’t we?

I get up and look out of the window, I'm hundreds of feet above London and the windows up here are always locked anyway, as a security measure.

The ceiling is solid; there are no air vents in this room, again for obvious reasons.

I sit back down again and bury my head in my hands. What if something goes wrong and all my memories are completely wiped? I can’t imagine anything more dreadful than not remembering all the wonderful things I’ve seen and done. I can’t imagine never knowing my handsome time travelling Doctor. Tears prick my eyes and I pull in a few deep breaths. I must not cry. 

I can hear voices outside… laughter… footsteps drawing closer... like my time is running out.

Then from nowhere, there’s a sound. A beautiful, fantastic, familiar sound. A whooshing and grinding whale call that surges right through me. My hair is picked up and blown about as a large grey statue materialises right in front of me.

A large grey statue? What?

The Doctor appears from the underskirts of the statue and sees me, looking tearful, frightened and possibly a tad bemused.

“Fifth attempt at getting here, but nevertheless, here we are!”

“What?”

“Are you coming?”

“In… that?” The door handle rattles and a fist bangs against it. Some one is shouting through it.

“Weeelll… I suppose we could stand about weighing up the odds, but I really don’t think we can afford the time…”

I don’t need to be asked again, I’m over to him and his statue in a flash, he holds open the underskirt door and I squeeze through it. He follows and bangs the door shut after him.

There is total silence as if the world outside has just stopped.


	28. Turning Point

_23rd July 2009 (Rose is 24)_

 

He looked awful… thin, haggard, grubby, miserable and hairy. I mean, he really needed a shave, he practically had a beard.

He was across the room, beside what looked like a sort of console and it seemed as if he was waiting for me to react. So I did.

I walked right up to him and placed my palms upon his chest feeling for the pulse that would identify him, although I already had an idea who he was.

I nodded and took a step back from him.

“Listen…” he began.

“I’m…” I said at the same time. We stopped and sort of laughed nervously. Then he continued without meeting me in the eye.

“You don’t have to stay, you’re not a prisoner, I couldn’t leave you… not in there… bastards were going to Retcon me, wasn’t about to let that happen to you.”

“How did you know?”

“What?”

“Where I was… how did you know?”

His eyes dropped and he absentmindedly fiddled with the dissected monitor on the makeshift console. I walked around him and saw images of Torchwood’s CCTV pictures from around the building.

“You really didn’t look happy about being there, Rose...”

“No… you’re right… I wasn’t… I just thought…”

“You thought I was him… sorry to disappoint…” He turned from me then and I let a hand touch his arm, he jumped as if I had burnt him.

“No… actually, I didn’t… I just needed to confirm it was you… and present you, not future you…” 

“Future me?”

“Yeah… the one who has spent the last three years with me, well, with me is loosely putting it, but nevertheless I’m pretty sure it’s you…”

“Right… so you were angry with me… not because I’m not him but because…”

“Look… listen… there's lots to say and I want to say it… but I don’t want to begin here… I want to begin by saying I’m...” But the last word was cut from me as there was a terrific bump and we were thrown into each other and to the grating below us. The lights flickered and went out. It was pitch black.

“Sorry… first flight and all that and she really wasn’t ready… probably gone six steps backwards, but that’s fine...” I was virtually on top of him. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face.

“Where are we, exactly?” He didn’t reply, but helped me up and moved back to the console where he fiddled about for a moment before a light went on, not the same one as before, the one that had given the undeveloped space a muted almost sepia tone. This was more like a single beam that pointed to the doorway. Clearly, he had already been plunged into a black abyss before and had put an emergency light in place so he could find his way out. Which is exactly what we did.

The large room I walked into from beneath the underskirt of the statue was filled with yet more statues amongst other things. It was dark and dusty with huge cobwebs everywhere. There were no windows at all.

“We’re in an ante room at the BM,” he said as I gazed about me.

“What?” My eyes clicked back to him, looking for a translation of what he had just said.

“We’re underneath the basement of the British Museum… there are a mass of exhibition rooms down here… built to protect the exhibits during the war. They are called the ante rooms…”

“How did you… I mean… why here?”

“It’s huge down here and abandoned… It’s easy to get here, easy to slip in and out of such a public place pretty much undetected and I was still in London… near to… well, close by…”

“You’re living rough down here?”

“Not exactly… I mean, yes, I’ve been staying here, but I’ve been busy…” He indicated the statue, which I now had the time to study.

“But that’s…”

“Yes… I know… probably the last one ever carved in this universe and they dumped it down here…”

“I don’t get it… I mean… it’s a TARDIS inside, right?”

“Yeah… well, it’s getting there… been working on it flat out… materials aren’t in abundance. No… old Queen Vic here was hollow, a natural substance… rock hard, impervious to extreme temperatures. Bit heavy, but ideal for an outer shell… it’s a bit flaky building a TARDIS without one, not impossible, but not ideal.”

“What?”

“Rose… I discovered that the statue was hollowed out… had a concealed door… possibly to hide from the enemy… who knows. But it was a perfect space to build in…”

“You’ve been building a TARDIS? I thought you could only grow them?”

“Yes, there will be growing involved… but initially, all I needed were a few bits and bobs and somewhere to build… given the right circumstances I can sling a console together in about twenty minutes… it’s taken a little longer because of materials… but here we are… got to you in the nick of time…” I stared at him for a while as if her were talking a different language to me again.

“Can we… I mean… is there somewhere?” He took my elbow and led me to a little area that he had obviously put together himself. There was a very old, but equally comfy squashed leather sofa, a chunky wooden coffee table laden down with all manner of things… books… mugs… the remnants of take away food and lots of tooly bits and bobs.

“It’s not exactly home, but it’s comfortable enough… sit…” I slumped down on the sofa and observed him.

“You look awful…”

“Been a bit… side tracked…” he mumbled.

“Yeah… don’t expect I look so… look… I need to say I’m so sorry for the way I treated you… the way that I… told you…”

“You don’t have to apologise, Rose, you were upset and I didn’t help matters…”

“You don’t understand…”

“I think I probably do… try me…”

“You visited me as a child, yeah?”

“Yes…”

“When did that all start?”

“When I lost you to this universe… I couldn’t bear the idea of never seeing you again… it was wrong of me, but I needed it and once I started doing it, I found I couldn’t stop…”

“But surely… I mean wasn’t that interfering? Couldn’t you have altered the course of time?”

“Maybe I did… who knows, can’t change it now. I’d do it all again…”

“It doesn’t all add up, you know… some of the things you said… almost like promises of a happily ever after… but you already knew then that I was trapped here…”

“I made no promises, Rose… I just helped you out, befriended you, that’s all…”

“But, Jimmy… in France… you distinctly said…”

“France?” he said blankly. I turned to him and then his face dropped a little in realisation, “he continued to visit.”

“Oh…” I said after a beat and somehow this didn’t make me feel better about it at all.

“Anyway, we can’t control his actions, we’re here and he’s there… carry on.”

“You’ve been visiting me here…”

“I have?”

“Yeah… within a couple of weeks of my being here, you arrived and you’ve been paying me regular if erratic visits ever since.”

“Right…”

“As my husband…”

“You didn’t know… I mean, I didn’t tell you?” His hand touched the place where his one heart now beat inside.

“No… you didn’t.”

“No wonder you were angry!”

“But, I can see it now… I think I would have found it harder to deal with then if you had said… and I was very ill at the time…”

“Yes…”

“You saved me… too late for… but you saved my life…”

“I think I sort of worked this all out from what you screamed at me that night… I’m sorry…”

“I know… me too…” We stopped for a while, thinking about our lost boy and then another thought occurred to me. How much could I tell him without damaging the fragment of time? I mean, he hadn’t told me much, but what I did know was quite important.

“Rose?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we just start afresh… you know put the anger aside and bugger the lot of them?”

“I think we may have already done that bit, don’t you?”

“I… I thought I’d lost you…” His voice cracked at this and I realised that for him all the time I had been seeing him here, he hadn’t actually seen me me in over three years. And this was putting the whole human/ duplicate/ whatever is one would call an identical man grown from a hand. Clone? No!

I reached across and took the mentioned hand in mine and we smiled sadly at each other.

*************

And now here we are, nearly a week later and we’ve been working on getting the TARDIS back to the point he had it at when he rescued me from work inside a statue of Queen Victoria, the last reigning monarch of this Earth.

We're still trying one another on, so to speak. He has issues to deal with to which I am helping him and I haven’t spoken of his visits in any more detail.

We were friends before we were lovers and I have to work through my own issues before we can even contemplate our relationship.

We certainly have a long journey to go on, but we’ll get there. 

I know that we do.


	29. Intermezzo

_September 12th 2009 (Rose is 24)_

 

I’m sitting on a bench at the top of Primrose Hill. I’ve been waiting over an hour now, but I know she’ll be here at some point.

It’s funny how much you can reflect upon as you wait. We used to come here when I was little; she used to call me Princess Primrose and we made daisy-chains and had picnics. It was a special place to us, even if it wasn’t even this actual place, but an alternative of it. 

It seems that this is the pattern of my life. If I lose something important… my dad… my world… my husband… then I’m given a replacement. Not that I see him quite like that, no, we are more like we’ve started over. You know, like we have history, but we need to get to know each other all over again. It’s quite nice in a way, an even footing, and very obvious how we both feel. I can’t knock the chance to fall in love with him all over again.

I often think of my handsome lonely traveller across that void and wonder. It still confuses me; I don’t suppose that I will ever quite get over the choice he made. ‘Sacrifice he made,’ says this human version. I suppose he sees it clearer than I do.

Anyway, I’m here waiting for my mum; it would have been Grandad Prentice’s birthday today and I know she would come here. He loved it here, flying the kite high in the air and making me squeal with delight.

We’ve been living under the British Museum for two months now… sneaking out in disguise to get supplies. Money has got tight, and the last time I tried to pop home I set an alarm off that they obviously put into place to catch me out. 

We've discussed taking a trip out to the Mansion in Surrey, but it’s a long way and we don’t know what sort of reception we’re likely to get. Then I realised the date and thought I’d give this a try. I mean, if she believes I should be in the hands of Torchwood and phones Pete, I can be off down that hill at maximum speed and on the tube back to central London in a jiffy.

But she won’t, I’ll bet Pete’s been through hell since I disappeared, knowing my mum.

Yeah, two months of no touching and just us alone working and living and sleeping together. But we agreed, we need time, we need to adjust.

So, when I’m not out gathering food, I am exploring all the creepy ante rooms below the British Museum and you wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff down there.

One of the first rooms I started on was part of the Egyptian exhibition. They had so many exhibits that many were stored down there even into the latter part of last century.

The reason this particular room attracted me was because it was very evident that he had been rummaging away in there. There were a number of boxes that had been opened and the contents spilled out onto the floor as if he had been searching for something in a great hurry.

I asked him about it later on as we ate Pot Noodles heated up from a kettle boiled upon a camping stove.

“You don’t seriously think Egyptians were of this Earth do you, Rose?”

“Sorry?”

“They were Ancients looking to settle after their own world burnt out… I mean, think about the technology, Rose… pyramids in an undeveloped civilisation? Please!”

“Seriously?”

“And their technology was fantastic… superior to most… not quite on a par with Gallifrey, but useful nonetheless…”

“And that’s what you’ve been doing here, then?”

“Of course, how else was I going to build a new TARDIS and rescue you?”

He didn’t seem to have much respect for the stuff he was digging through and in my boredom; I decided to tidy up after him. That went down like a lead balloon.

“How can I sort all this out if you move everything about, Rose?” he asked with such an air of exasperation that I was mortified for all of thirty seconds. I watched him seething silently as he put every object back exactly where I had tidied it up from.

There was so much down there. In one room, I found an ornately carved gigantic wooden bed and took it upon myself to air the hard straw mattress and source bedding from the many rooms running below the famous building.

I made up a little bedroom area with a privacy screen that he told me later was over five hundred years old! The bed was so comfortable though, even if it did smell a little musky.

He came to find me much later and I had fallen asleep, I don’t know what it was that woke me, but I opened my eyes to find him sat beside me just staring at me.

“What... something wrong?” I asked sleepily.

“This looks… like heaven…” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

“There’s plenty of room…” I mumbled indicating the space beside me and he looked at it wistfully.

“Best not,” he said softly and left me, struggling in and out of sleep. We had been there a week and were sleeping on old sofa’s whose springs had started to come through. It hadn’t been comfortable and we were still a little self conscious around one another. I dozed back to sleep and it was the noise of the TARDIS that woke me next. I wasn’t sure if it was in my dreams or in reality.

The next morning he looked different, cleaner, brighter a little less worried and I knew that his visits to the past had begun. I wondered when this time actually was, but pushed it away. It had to be like this or else we wouldn’t be here now.

 

I see my mum coming up the hill well before she even realises there is someone on the bench. She sits without looking at me, clearly the scarf and dark glasses work.

It is some moments before I speak as we watch the zeppelins floating about us.

“Not such good kite flying weather today,” I finally speak and she jumps out of her skin and turns to me.

“Rose!”

“You gonna dob me in, Mum?” I ask her half jokingly and she shakes her head, tears welling in her beautiful blue eyes.

“Don’t be silly, Rose… where you been… I’ve been out me mind?”

“They were gonna use drugs on me Mum, truth drugs, then wipe my memory so I wouldn’t remember them doing it… you know how dangerous that combination is?”

“Pete said that Unit wanted to take you in and he wasn’t happy about it… said he was going to take you to work and get some answers… it wasn’t supposed to…”

“I was in danger and Pete made me believe that you wanted it that way… he wasn’t involved in what could have been the heavier stuff but still…”

“So you with him now?”

“Don’t say it like that, Mum!”

“He’s a monster, put two of your work mates in intensive care!”

“He was upset, he had just found out that his baby son had died and his wife had nearly gone with him!”

“Wife?”

“We got married, Mum, we were coming to tell you that day… it was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life…”

“Married where?”

“On a hill on a planet far away… we exchanged vows, it was so beautiful…”

“It don’t count… you ain’t legally wed unless you do it properly here with a vicar in a church!”

“Says you… got married in a registry office… I know, I was there!” Mum didn’t respond to this. “I love him, Mum… he’s everything…”

“He is him?”

“Yes!”

“What do you want me to do, Rose, they’re still looking for you… where have you been?”

“Can’t tell you that… but we need clean clothes… food, pasta, tins etc… money… can you go to my house, pick up some stuff?”

“You can’t hide forever!”

“Oh, we could, but we don’t intend to… we’re just lying low for a while.”

“What do you want me to pick up, then?”

“Jeans, jumpers, pyjamas toothbrushes, you know, the usual.”

“Wha' about him, though, he has nothing?”

“You’ll find some of his things there too… no, ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies!” 

We talked for a little longer, mostly about Grandad and a little of my brother Tony, and then after arranging to meet the next day, we parted company. Mum didn’t give away much to me that day, but I could see her relief at seeing me oozing from every pore.

When I got back to the ante rooms, there was no sign of him, nor of the statue of Queen Victoria. 

I picked up a book I had borrowed from the British Museum Library and curled up on the great, huge bed and waited...


	30. Christmas Eve

_Christmas Eve 2009 (Rose is 24)_

 

For nearly three months my mum negotiated with my dad. At first he was fuming and it took some time to convince him that the story that Saul had fed him wasn’t quite as things had happened. 

A first meeting with me was tense and untrusting on both our parts, but gradually he began to see sense and after very long discussions with each of the teams on duty both when they had the Doctor in custody and then when they had me.

Certainly the stories differed in various colours of the rainbow and Saul has been sent away on operative duties in Antarctica. He will undergo extensive anger control management and unless he passes the tests he will be retconned and discharged from duty.

The Doctor is still wanted by Torchwood; it’s been charter for many years anyway. But Pete has now buried the information and we, just this week, have been given the all clear to move about freely.

So, it is Christmas Eve and I am taking him to the Mansion for the first time. The intent is to have our first proper family Christmas together. I feel so sad at this time of year when I see Tony enjoying himself so. Our son should be here too, enjoying it with him. 

Pete and he have met before during the negotiations, but the atmosphere between them hasn’t been all that brilliant. I suppose it’s up to us Tyler women to help the ice to break. I am willing it now. It is all I crave, that we become the couple we have always been destined to be.

He still holds back and I need him so much. It seems unfair that he has satisfaction from past me and I have none here and now, but I think he feels like he would betray both of us if he maintained a sexual relationship with both of us at the same time. I suppose there are morals there and past me needed him so much.

However, there were times he visited when he is quite a few years older and we already had Alba, so I suppose at some point his morals go awry. Until then I have had to keep quiet and use my imagination.

Our secret den under the BM still remains just that. He doesn’t want anyone else to know and I agree. The TARDIS is now growing inside the statue of Queen Victoria and if anybody disturbed her, I think it would break both of us. We already seem to have a firm bond with her.

I haven’t told Mum that we aren’t in a sexual relationship at the moment and she has put us in the same room accepting that we are married and I am touched, worried and sort of excited at the prospect of sharing a bed with him.

He shakes his head when I open my mouth to protest and so I keep quiet with all manna of thoughts whirring through my poor frustrated head. Once or twice I catch him staring at me with a look of utter amusement emblazoned across his face. This just has my stomach churning all the more. I feel like a virgin on her wedding night!

I change quickly not using the en suite in our bedroom and scoot into bed quickly while he's in the shower.

It seems like he's taking forever and I decide the easiest way out of this is to play possum.

My heart is in my mouth when the bed dips and he slides quietly in beside me.

He’s been sleeping on that rickety old sofa for months aside from the times he has gone back to sleep in our bed in the past and I really don’t know how to react with him. But somehow I know something is going to happen tonight.

There is a long silence and I don’t think either of us takes a breath until he speaks.

“Rose?” I jump a little, even though his voice is soft.

“Mmm?” I answer.

“Can… are you… I mean, could we… cuddle?” I realise in those stuttered words how nervous he is as well and I turn to him without saying a thing.

It feels so natural being in his arms, we fit together so well and it isn’t long before we’re kissing each other, our tongues exploring one another’s of old.

“Rose… I …” He is asking without asking and relief floods through me along with my desire.

“Yes…” I whisper back and his hand moves under my nightie as I open to him like a flower that’s been in bud for an eternity.

I orgasm just at his touch and it pleases him so much knowing how much I have needed him. Pretty soon we are naked and before we begin proper married life in real alternative time I ask him.

“Why now?” He is poised and ready and his face is a picture at my words.

“It’s Christmas?” he offers with a slight pitch to his voice.

“Really?”

“No… sort of… I’ve wanted to for… well ever since I rescued you from Torchwood… I wanted to give you some adjustment time… but then you told me… you told me this is when we begin again… so I knew… been saving myself for tonight…”

“I told you? I told you you’d be shagging me on Christmas… Doctor are you visiting future me as well as past?”

“Rose…”

“Why would you do that?”

“I can’t say… Rose…” We are paused on a precipice as I digest this new information. He’s bedding three versions of me… well, nearly bedding. I should be indignant, angry, bewildered. But right here, right now… it doesn’t matter… its all relative… its still us, isn’t it?

He may have made love to two other versions of me to get us here, but aren’t I guilty of the same?

Our lovemaking is ferocious and needy and we see Christmas in together, joined in what is exactly right about us.

Afterwards, he leans over and hands a little blue jewellery box to me with a shy smile.

“Early present… thought we could, you know… do it like the natives… would please your mum no end… “

It’s an engagement ring… I fleetingly wonder where it’s come from but it doesn’t stop me putting it on.

It’s a single flawless diamond set into a pale silver metal. I put it up to the light, it is perfect, uncut and although it isn’t enormous it still sits fairly large on my hand.

“To please my Mum?” I tease and he pulls me in close.

“Because I love you and I want to make sure you're my wife in every way…”

We make love again and this time it is sweet and tender. We have very little sleep that night and it only seems minutes before we hear Tony shouting that Father Christmas has been.


	31. Fragments

_June 2018 (Rose is 33)_

 

We moved back to our house and he seemed to settle down to a life of travelling to and fro from home to the secret TARDIS growing under the museum... he said it was better to keep her there while he worked. She would be better kept a secret and better not being moved... at least not physically... didn't stop the occasional trip off to visit me... me past and me future...

Although Pete begged, we decided not to return to Torchwood after the whole interrogation thing. I don't trust my team like I did and in this line of work you need to know your back is covered. So, we freelance... seems that we have a use. Somehow we are known about and people come from all over for our help. Like an alien detective agency.

If anyone has problems of an alien type... not even alien, just mysterious supernatural type, then they seem to find us. Not only that, aliens seem to find us and ask for help too. If they are having trouble with discrimination or victimisation or just because they need to find a way home... then we're who they call... Alien Busters if you will!

He's taken to calling me 'Scully' sometimes when we're on a case... I think I preferred it when he called me Shiver!

Frequently I travel to the centre of London with him, but he tends to keep long hours and although our little nest is cosy underneath the BM, I do like our house on the outskirts of town and usually end up going home alone. 

Sometimes I am visited by future him... usually its miscalculation on his part but I'm always glad to see him. Seeing him older reassures me that we are still okay... that we are living our lives together, although he rarely tells me what is going on... he's still so anal about 'damaging the fragment of time'... I think we must have trod on many a butterfly during our travels!

He's very sexy with grey flecks running through his sideburns and little laughter lines crinkling at his eyes. He's filled out too, a human Doctor can put on weight in a good way... he was painfully thin when he was... younger(?)

Alright, I confess, I am guilty of sleeping with future him, so I cannot complain when I know he has been with past or future me, can I? But we are all still us, so it doesn't matter in the scheme of things... my memories are going to catch up with me, just as his did; sooner rather than later.

So life goes on... adventures and science and domestic and a bit of timey wimey all added in. A good life... a happy life... except one thing...

When I lost the baby it filled me with an emptiness that only one thing could fill and, as happy as I am with him, I need to fill that hole... have needed to fill it for a long, long time. 

I know I'm still young, that there is plenty of time, but just knowing that Alba exists, that he has met her, still sees her, fills me with such a yearning. I know that until I have her in my arms I will not feel that this life is complete.

So a year or so later, we made a decision to try for a baby, although I have to admit, he was a little hesitant about it and couldn't explain why. I found out why gradually.

We both believed that the reason I lost our baby was because I couldn't carry a Time Lord's child... that we weren't physically compatible for me to carry to full term, so naturally I assumed that now he was human, there would be no problem. Well, we didn't allow for that fact that he is still part Time Lord and when I conceived for the second time within months of our reconciliation I was over the moon. He didn't seem so overjoyed which annoyed me although I probably understand why now.

I lost the baby, and three more after that over three years. It was awful. I mean, not as life threatening as the first, nor as dramatic. One day I was pregnant, the next I had a heavy period. It was, at first, saddening but by the time I lost the fifth baby, I was a mess. 

And I took it out on him.

“You've tricked me into this... you said we will have a baby later on... but we can't... its so obvious we can't!”

“Rose...”

“Don't look at me like that with those oh, so ancient eyes... I'm upset and you won't tell me anything... you must know what's going to happen... why couldn't you at least warn me?”

“Rose...”

“Again with the big round eyes... its not even as if we can go to a proper doctor and find out what the problem is, is it?”

“Proper Doctor?” Sometimes I forgot that he was hurting too and unfortunate words such as these would only rub salt into a wound.

“You know what I meant! Don't turn it around on me...” But he was gone... I learnt later that he would do that when he hadn't got a check on his human emotions... run off to me in the future.

And it was future him that always offered the comfort I needed. Usually as present him scarpered, future him would turn up. Not only would he hold me while I vented, he would offer me hope. I can only assume that present him was visiting a happier, less frustrated me at the time and getting much the same sort of comfort.

Over the years, we've had many moments of sadness and sorrow and desperation. But it always come to this, one version of my Doctor has always been at my side, through thick and thin.

And so, the advice that he has given me has been very sound. That I have to trust in My Doctor.

And so he (my present Doctor advised and aided in a very odd proxy manner by my future Doctor) started a serious of tests using the growing TARDIS to help and gradually and with a little time travel here and there a formula was created. Something that would help my body to carry “a superior” life force. Sometimes I just bite my lip to stop the angry words from tumbling out. Usually it works.

And so now I am filled with both dread and hope in equal measures. I am pregnant, six months pregnant, the longest I have gone so far and I can feel her moving inside me. My Doctor is wonderful, attentive and confident and this tells me more than any words could.

All this time we been working towards this and now, as I begin to believe that this is it, this is Alba... I know that life will change... life must change. The Doctor has told me as much... that once the baby is here the travels will gradually become less and less frequent until eventually we will catch up with ourselves.

And that explains why I don't see him much older than the ten or so years that I have known him like this. I am relieved at this, I thought there might be something ominous in this and I am grateful that he could explain it so simply and easily to me.

The 'alien busting' has stopped for a while, although we still get contacted regularly. The Doctor recruited a team to help deal with them.. he even has an office you guessed it... underneath the BM.. it's a secret organisation somewhat like Jack's Torchwood was like in the other dimension.

The team are a mixed bunch. A couple of Torchwood colleagues and friends who never came to terms with what happened... a young doctor called Martha (yes, that Martha, only not really her as we are in an alternate dimension) who he didn't actually seek out, she just happened to get embroiled in one of our 'adventures' and we all hit it off immediately, the next minute she was joining the team. Actually Martha and I have become quite good friends and she has been excellent support for me. Anyway, she bought her boyfriend in on it. A rather handsome man called Gary Preston who runs his own bistro near the museum... delicious grub... excellent eye candy, but he knows so many people, so many places that he has become very useful to the team. 

Martha also introduced us to Rory, a nurse on an excursion from some place in the country. He's fairly new and I don't know if he'll work out, he's completely bonkers about the girl he left back home who he says thinks they are just great friends. Apparently she's coming to visit next month, so we'll all get to meet her at Gary's bar. A feisty red head, but not Donna although I could tell he wanted it to be.

We haven't come across that one, not yet anyway, although I do believe he's looked.

Anyway, he's confident that they can hold the fort while he looks after me and the baby. 

The relationship with my family is fine. Pete has long since stopped asking us questions about what we get up to and sometimes he comes to us for advice and we are always there to give it. Tony is turning into a fine young man and his relationship with the Doctor is amazing. He looks up to him and hints at joining him when he is old enough. Not until he's been to college or I think we might have to go on the run again! Mum is delighted at the prospect of finally becoming a grandmother and she has been wonderful if not a little pushy at times.

So this is where we are... eagerly and yet apprehensively awaiting the birth of our child, he's still visiting future me and past me and I still get the occasional visit from future him... and he has a job doing what he loves best... a place of work and a practically finished TARDIS.

Just waiting for the next adventure now....


	32. Birthday

_September 15th 2018 (Rose is 33)_

 

Alba... Alba... Alba... 

Deep down, I knew that today was going to be the day, despite the fact that she wasn't due for a fortnight and despite the fact that he had decided that he needed to visit the TARDIS underneath the British Museum... because let's face it he should have known... he really should have known!

He kissed me sweetly as I lay cocooned in our big white cotton duvet. I hardly moved and he smiled, a happy hum vibrating in his throat.

“Do you really have to go?” I pouted, knowing the effect it would have on him.

“Rose... it's so crucial, this growth at the moment... it means the difference between pin-pointing an exact time or location and pot luck...”

“I like pot-luck,” I murmured, softly tracing my fingers up his shoulder and around to the back of his neck.

“I only need to go and check... five minutes is all it will take.”

“Plus travelling... through London... on a Saturday...” If my voice hadn't been so soft and sleepy you would have thought that I was angry at his leaving.

“If anything happens, I can be here as quick as you like, can't I?”

“Yeah, provided she's cooperating and doesn't end you up five years from now... or nowhere... and that doesn't include your inward journey!”

“Rose...”

“Alright... alright... go... but remember when she decides to come, Alba is waiting for no one...”

“Your Mum is on her way anyway, you won't be alone.” He sat up and smoothed my hair back, looking down on me with such a tender look in his eye.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say that was the real reason you're going...” He leaned over and shut me up with a very thorough and very toe curling kiss which, had I not been so comfortable, so heavy with Alba; I may have acted upon and dragged him into our nest and kept him there... where he belonged.

After he went, the house became so quiet that it disturbed me from my dozing and I moved around a bit, trying to find the best spot. It was my ambition to remain there until he returned, well, it would have been had not the bathroom been calling me... again. 

Sitting on the loo I could see a spot of dirt on the tile around the side of the sink and even though I had been ordered off cleaning, I knew it was going to bother me if I didn't deal with it, right that minute.

I got the anti-bacterial spray out of the cupboard under the sink and as I straightened up, a strange sensation rippled through me... a tightening of muscles I had nearly forgotten about and a burn at the base of my spine. I stilled, wondering if this was it, but soon realised it must have been the position I had put my body in when bending. 

But it didn't stop there... as I got onto my knees and sprayed the offending area, it happened again.

“Braxton Hicks...” I muttered and began to scrub with all the zealous of a happy char lady. Cleaning was so satisfying those days!

When I stood up I felt something deep inside me pop and suddenly fluid was running down my legs and the strange cramping sensation rippled through me again. Okay... now this was just a little more than a leaky bladder and Braxton Hicks.

Did I need to phone him straight away? He had only been gone half an hour or so... he would think it some kind of evil plot to get him home. My Mum was on her way, he had said, so I made the decision to wait for her.

I placed a towel over my offending amniotic fluids and ran a deep hot bath and slid in to it, relishing in how the soapy suds caressed my oh, so very sensitive skin.

It wasn't long before the little contractions I had been experiencing became suddenly stronger and that I realised I couldn't get my huge body out of this deep and slippery bath.

Ten minutes later, my mother let herself into our home accompanied by the wails of her daughter, in full labour, stuck in the bath and very much alone.

The plan had been to go nicely off to the local maternity hospital and have my midwife there, with my husband. And my mother was supposed to be outside the delivery room waiting to meet her granddaughter.

Well, within moments, Mum had me out of the bath wrapped in a huge fluffy white towel and sitting on my bed listening to her making the phone calls that would bring the help that it was quite obvious I needed. But for the circumstances, it would have made me feel like her small child again.

The midwife was soon on her way and the Doctor, who had been sceptical at first and then panicky. I was worried about him driving back too fast and ending up in hospital as well. Except when the midwife arrived and examined me, hospitals were not part of the plan. She called an ambulance 'just to be on the safe side' and opened up her emergency birthing kit.

I had been in labour less than two hours and I was in the full throws of it... my body racked with the agony of it. My heart drooped because he wasn't there... he had promised me... he was going to miss her arrival and it meant so much. I didn't want to start this new adventure angry and upset with him... I didn't want to start this new adventure without him.

The need to push is overwhelming, your body just takes over and everything else fades about you. The midwife, expertly trained to guide her charge through this, talked me through every single movement. Oh, she was good and all my trust was placed within her hands... I think I may even have fallen a little in love with her during those close and personal moments.

Mum was doing all the right things and she just knew what I needed without having to ask. I am glad that she was there, although I would never have believed it.

“Mum, he needs to be here...” I groaned at her every now and again and she would nod and go over to the window, speak sternly into her phone and then come back to me with back rubs and encouragement.

And then the moment was there and as I heard exclaims of hair and how well I was doing, tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. He didn't make it... he didn't make it.

The sound of the ambulance screeching up outside interrupted my labour and then I heard it, that wonderful, familiar sound that confirmed to me that my Doctor will always, always be by my side when I need him. The TARDIS had come.

He burst through the door at the moment Alba burst from me and his face lit up as he lunged forward to be with me... to be with us.

It wasn't until he was beside me, with Alba encircled in our arms that I noticed the little tear filled crows feet and the speckles of silver hairs growing up through his side burns...


	33. Alba, An Introduction

_Same day, later on..._

 

I was nursing Alba... the midwife had gone, the ambulance too... Mum was in the kitchen sorting out the multitude of laundry I had created in bringing her into the world. I could hear something, a commotion of sorts outside in the garden. Placing Alba gently down on the clean cotton sheets, I pulled my aching body out of bed and shuffled to the window.

It was a shock to see two Doctors standing in my garden arguing heatedly. One was younger than the other, he looked dishevelled and panicked and the other, the slightly older one was obviously trying to placate him. The statue of Queen Victoria looked very odd out there, I hoped that no one had noticed in all the chaos that had been going on.

And then the world stopped as a sort of doorway in a tree that I hadn't noticed suddenly opened up and a small child walked out. A little girl with shoulder length toffee coloured hair. She was, I would say, seven although it was hard to tell. I craned my face up towards the glass, trying to hear the voices.

Both men turned to her, the older moving forward as the younger one stared open mouthed at the child. The older Doctor picked her up and smiled, nodding towards his younger self and then she waved at him. The younger Doctor could do nothing but return the wave.

The two figures disappeared into the tree and with a melodious whine, it was gone.

My eyes turned to the younger man, still standing by his TARDIS staring at the void the tree had left and then all of a sudden he was looking right at me. I was transfixed by all that I had witnessed and didn't move a muscle as he approached the house and let himself in through the back door.

I was still standing there when he entered the room, a little sheepishly. I suppose he was expecting world war three or something.

“I'm sorry...” he spoke eventually and what could I do? He was the one who had missed out, not me. I was at the birth of our daughter and a future version of him was at the birth of our daughter. But he wasn't, nor ever could he be.

“You poor thing,” I whispered stretching out my arms and letting him move swiftly into them. We stayed like this for some time, and although I never said a word, I knew he was crying. Finally I took him by the hand and led him to the bed where Alba, our daughter, lay peacefully sleeping. The look of sorrow in his eyes was instantly replaced by one of pure wonder as he carefully sat down and stroked her little face.

It was a little while later that I caught sight of Mum in the doorway. We must have looked a picture all lying together in that bed, the bed that could tell a thousand secrets. I smiled at her and she shook her head gently, pointed at her wrist, waved at me and then she left.

I must have drifted off to sleep because when I awoke it was getting dark and Alba was grunting. I looked about and finally focused on her in his arms right beside me. He was totally absorbed in his daughter and it wasn't until she bleated a hungry cry that the spell was broken.

“Think she might be hungry?” I whispered and he turned to me with a big grin.

“Already latched her on a couple of times while you were sleeping...” His eyebrows waggled and I looked down at my exposed breast.

“You what?” I didn't know what to feel. Cheated... abused... indignant? I settled for the latter. “You should have woke me!”

“I tried... you were out for the count and this little madame was starving.”

I gingerly pulled myself up into a sitting position and he handed her over. It took a little persuasion from both of us but eventually she latched on and then I looked up at him. I needed an explanation.

“So... when your Mum called... I didn't really believe.. I mean she wasn't due for two weeks... so maybe I could have gone faster... I finished up there... I only had a little bit more... I'm sorry. I left the museum and from the word go there were hiccups after hiccups. There had been a bomb scare in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station... pretty much effected the whole of the area. The museum was in lock down and it was very hard to get out undetected. I should have realised then, but you don't do you? The streets were in chaos, all the nearby buildings evacuated and people everywhere. Not really very safe if a bomb were to go off. I began to walk away from it all thinking I could get on a bus further out. I walked for a good mile and then.. then I started getting these messages from your Mum... oh my god Rose... what I went through trying to get here. In the end I headed back into town... the TARDIS was the only option... should have used her before, only I thought she could do with the rest after all the work we'd been doing.” He finally stopped for a breath and I carefully moved Alba onto my shoulder and gently patted her back.

“You should have rung... told my Mum you were stuck... at least we would have known!”

“I couldn't... by the time I thought of that, I had lost signal again ... must have been something to do with the bomb scare... a signal can trigger the simplest of devices and it would make sense that they would blanket the mobile signal in the vicinity, right?”

“I suppose... so you got back to the museum?” I placed a sleeping Alba gently on the bed and checked her nappy.

“Changed her just before you woke up... I eventually got to the museum... only it wasn't easy... everyone was being directed out of town, so I was going against the flow and if a policeman or a soldier saw me they made me turn around. I had to break in through the service entrance... made quite a bit of damage... I may have to change workshops...”

“It's alright... we can ask Pete to smooth it over...”

“Course... then the TARDIS didn't want to cooperate at all... quite reminded me of our old girl.. ended up taking me to Scotland and back!”

“Could have been worse.”

“Not at that moment... I was desperate and she knew it. Eventually, we made it to the back garden. The house was silent, eerily silent... I didn't go barging in... thought something was wrong so I peeked inside the window and that's when I saw him...” His face was so bitter that I nearly laughed out loud. But I bit back on it.

“Him? You mean you?”

“It doesn't feel like me when I'm on the outside looking in!”

“Tell me about it!” He didn't pick up on the sarcasm and carried on with his sorrowful tale.

“So, I had to wait until he left... didn't want to create any unnecessary paradoxes... didn't realise he would be leaving by the back door until he did.”

“Wow... so you came face to face with yourself?”

“It's not as if I haven't before... but not the same me... it was so weird...”

“What were you arguing about?”

“I was upset, naturally, and a little bit jealous, I suppose. But he told me he was trying to rectify a wrong. That version of me... well, let's just say no one made it back to share Alba's entry into the world and it caused such a lot of heartache and anger. She wanted him to try and be there.”

“She?”

“Well.. that is to say... you...”

“I encouraged that?”

“No... you asked if I could and he worked out a way... read a time line that he could manoeuvre... tweaked a little pocket of time to allow himself in. I suppose on reflection it may have saved me getting slaughtered... he also took the slap from your mother for cutting it so fine...”

“That slap is yet to come for you so don't get cocky!” His face dropped as he pondered upon this.

“Yeah, well maybe I deserve it...”

“Hang on though, surely if he's tweaking time lines, then things will alter? You know when we were having problems you were visiting me in the past... if you undo all of it... then surely you undo... all of it?”

“No... that's the beauty of flux and fixed... he managed to find a pocket of flux that he could manipulate, that's why he didn't get here sooner and why he left so suddenly.”

“But the child?”

“Alba...”

“Alba!”

“Yeah... by the time she's eight we're travelling again, Rose.. the TARDIS is up and running, even got a beautifully accurate chameleon circuit... something to look forward to.”

“You mean I was inside that tree?”

“Future you, Rose... amazing thought really, another version of me, you and Alba all at the same place in the same time!”

“Amazing? It's a total head fuck, that's what it is...”


End file.
